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Notable people · Science · Psychologist

James J. Gibson

Born in McConnelsville, Gibson reshaped the study of perception. He argued that we perceive our surroundings directly and coined the term 'affordance.'

At a glance

Born
1904-01-27
Died
1979-12-11
Education
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, began
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, to 1928, PhD
Known as
Science, Psychologist
Organizations
Cornell University, Smith College

Life story

James Jerome Gibson was born January 27, 1904, in McConnelsville. His father worked for the Wisconsin Central Railroad and his mother taught school; he grew up in the Midwest and settled in Wilmette, Illinois.

He started at Northwestern, transferred to Princeton, and earned a PhD in psychology in 1928. He taught at Smith College, where he met his wife and fellow psychologist Eleanor Jack in 1932, and at Cornell from 1950.

He held that the mind picks up information from the environment directly, without needing extra mental processing. He coined the word affordance for what an environment offers an animal to do, an idea later used widely in design and ergonomics. His books include The Perception of the Visual World (1950), The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979).

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1967 and died in Ithaca, New York, on December 11, 1979.

Timeline

  • 1904-01-27: Born (McConnelsville, OH) source
  • 1928: Completes PhD at Princeton (Princeton, NJ) source
  • 1932: Meets Eleanor Jack at Smith College (Northampton, MA) source
  • 1950: Joins Cornell; publishes The Perception of the Visual World (Ithaca, NY) source
  • 1966: Publishes The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems source
  • 1967: Elected to National Academy of Sciences source
  • 1979: Publishes The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception source
  • 1979-12-11: Dies (Ithaca, NY) source

What James is known for

  • Founded ecological psychology
  • Coined 'affordance'
  • Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1967)
  • The Perception of the Visual World (1950)
  • The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966)
  • The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979)

Honors and things named for them

  • National Academy of Sciences (1967)

Family

  • wife: Eleanor Jack Gibson

Ohio places

Where James J. Gibson was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

Further reading

Sources

Confidence. High: the main facts were confirmed in sources we opened.

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