In Memory Of… Wendell Garner
Honoring scientists who have made important and lasting contributions to the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior.
Wendell R. Garner, PhD (1921-2008)
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Yale University
Wendell R. Garner was the James Rowland Angell Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University. Among his most significant recognitions were his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1965, and his receiving the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1964 and American Psychological Foundation’s Gold Medal for Science of Psychology in 1999.
Garner’s body of contributions spans six-decades and exerts a continuing influence on psychology’s directions. His seminal studies in psychophysics, discrimination, perception, and information processing helped define such concepts as channel capacity and ultimately triggered the cognitive revolution. He was best known for Uncertainty and Structure as Psychological Concepts (1962) and The Processing of Information and Structure (1974). The former book is the definitive work extending information theory into psychology. The latter volume, drawn from his Fitts Lectures, introduced and integrated several elegant experimental approaches to the central questions of pattern perception and dimensional interaction. Garner’s other contributions, which have had similar, far-reaching impact, include the concept of converging operations (from his 1956 Psychological Review paper, “Operationism and the Concept of Perception” with Hake and Eriksen); and his pathbreaking 1949 textbook in applied experimental psychology, Applied Experimental Psychology (joint with Chapanis and Morgan).
Garner’s students from Yale and Johns Hopkins fondly remember Garner’s wife Barbara, who helped them get through the difficult moments of their graduate careers.
Individuals Honoring Wendell Garner:
Daniel Algom, Tel-Aviv University
Donald Blough, Brown University
James E. Cutting, Cornell University
Larry Erlbaum
Gary L. Felfoldy, User Focus, Inc.
John H. Flowers, University of Nebraska
Richard Gottwald, Indiana University, South Bend
Stephen Handel, University of Tennessee
Stewart Hulse, Johns Hopkins University
Shiro Imai, Hokkaido University
John T. Jost, New York University
* Gregory Lockhead, Duke University
Lawrence Marks, Yale University
Stephen Palmer, University of California, Berkeley
* James R. Pomerantz, Rice University
Marc Sebrechts, The Catholic University of America
Philip Teitelbaum, University of Florida
* The FABBS Foundation would like to thank Dr. Greg Lockhead and Dr. James Pomerantz for nominating Dr. Garner for this honor and for leading the effort to spread the word about his nomination.
