| 1 | Name: | Dr. Gordon H. Bower | |
| Institution: | Stanford University | ||
| Year Elected: | 2004 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 305 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1932 | ||
| Death Date: | June 17, 2020 | ||
After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1959, Gordon H. Bower was associated with Stanford University as an assistant, associate and full professor of psychology, chair of the psychology department and associate dean of humanities and science. He had been Albert Ray Long Professor of Psychology since 1975. Dr. Bower's career centered on memory, its nature and manipulation. He began with animal learning but soon moved to mathematical modeling and human experiments, where he successfully championed all-or-none learning models. Next came studies of the key role of linguistic chunking in creating and storing memories, which led into a series of foci including the nature of associative memory, the role of memory structures both in facilitating and distorting memory, the impact of emotional states on memories, and most recently on the narrative organization of memory. His contributions have been most significant and influential, in part through many first-rate students. Dr. Bower was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1975. He recently received the nation's highest honor in science: the 2005 National Medal of Science. | |||