CMU professor gets high award
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Carnegie Mellon University Professor John Anderson has spent his career developing better and better models of how people's minds work and learn, and his work has defined the field of cognitive psychology since the 1980s.
That alone might be enough to warrant an award.
But Dr. Anderson's work also has been driven by real-world applications. His theories have led to the creation of tutoring software that has helped more than half a million students in 2,600 schools around the country, among other efforts.
"And for that it's absolutely critical to recognize him above all others because it's incredibly hard to go from theory to application -- and he has done that," said Frederic Bertley, vice president of science and innovation at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Today, the institute will recognize that achievement, naming Dr. Anderson as one of nine recipients of a Franklin Award in science, business and technology. The actual award will be presented at a ceremony in April.
Winners of the award have a history of later winning the Nobel Prize, with 67 of them going on to win a Nobel, including three last year alone.
"We joke that the Nobel waits to see who we select," said Dr. Bertley, who oversees the Franklin Awards.
Even without the Nobel tie, the 186-year-old Franklin Awards are among the most prestigious in their fields. Past winners include Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, Marie and Pierre Curie, and Jane Goodall.
"It's quite prestigious company," Dr. Anderson said Monday. "I'm honored."
Dr. Anderson's colleagues in the field say the same about him.
"I've always thought of Anderson as the most important cognitive psychology theorist of our time," said David Kieras, a University of Michigan professor who works in the cognitive psychology field.
Originally from Vancouver, Dr. Anderson, 63, a professor of psychology and computer science, came to CMU in 1978. He already had worked on his first major theory in the field, human associative memory, in 1973, that attempted to use mathematical formulas to figure out how the brain worked.
He sought out CMU, he said, "because Allen Newell and Herb Simon were here. They were my inspirations."
"They basically set up the framework for understanding cognitive science at a time when cognitive science wasn't even defined," he said. "It was clearly the place to come. All the exciting work was being done here."
First Published November 9, 2010 12:00 am
