In Memory Of… Julian Hochberg
Honoring scientists who have made important and lasting contributions to the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior.
Julian Hochberg, PhD (1923-2022)
Emeritus Centennial Professor
Columbia University
Julian Hochberg was born on July 10th, 1923, in New York City. Like so many highly distinguished scientists he attended the College of the City of New York (City College), majoring in Physics. He was a graduate student at Berkeley in the latter days of Tolman and the time of Brunswik. On completion of his PhD, he took up his first academic appointment in 1949 as an Instructor at Cornell where he became Professor in 1960. He moved back to New York City in 1965 to become Professor at New York University. In 1969, he became Professor at Columbia University where he remained until his retirement.
Julian Hochberg was a leading experimentalist and theoretician in visual perception for half a century. Among his many contributions, he pioneered work on how we integrate the snapshot-views of the world with individual visual fixations into fully-formed percepts of the world “in the mind’s eye.” He led research and thinking on the Gestalt problem and how our percepts are structured to maximize both the likelihood of their being accurate and their simplicity. Beyond his explorations of form and motion perception, Hochberg extended his reach into the perception of pictures, film, and dance.
Hochberg received many honors, among them election to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He received awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and an Honorary Degree from Columbia University. He also assumed many responsibilities, including Presidencies of the Eastern Psychological Association and two divisions of the American Psychological Association (Division 3: Experimental Psychology and Division 10: Psychology and the Arts), and Chair of Section J (Experimental Psychology) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also appointed to National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council committees in sensory processes and human factors, and was twice the Chair of the Psychology Department at Columbia University. In addition, he served on the boards of major journals including Psychological Review, American Journal of Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
Individuals Honoring Julian Hochberg:
Leora Amira
James E. Cutting, Cornell University
Patricia DeLucia, Texas Tech University
Howard E. Egeth, Johns Hopkins University
Joan S. Girgus, Princeton University
Bruce Goldstein, University of Arizona
Norma V. Graham, Columbia University
John C. Hay, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Donald C. Hood
Leaetta Hough, The Dunnette Group
Stephen E. Palmer, University of California, Berkeley
* Mary Peterson, University of Arizona
Zygmunt Pizlo, Purdue University
* James Pomerantz, Rice University
Daniel Simons, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
* The FABBS Foundation would like to thank Dr. Mary Peterson and Dr. James Pomerantz for nominating Dr. Hochberg for this honor and for leading the effort to spread the word about his nomination.
