Personal background of Howard Gardner
Howard Earl Gardner was born July 11, 1943 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Ralph Gardner and Hilde (née Weilheimer) Gardner. His parents were refugees who fled from Nürnberg in Germany in 1938 with their 3 year old son, Eric. Prior to Howard’s birth, Eric was killed in a sleighing accident. He described himself as "a studious child who gained much pleasure from playing the piano." In fact, he became an accomplished pianist as a child and considered becoming a professional pianist. As Howard discovered his family’s “secret history” (and Jewish identity), he began to realize that he was both different from his parents and peers. Howard went to a nearby preparatory school nearby in Kingston, Pennsylvania. From there Howard went to Harvard University to study history in readiness for a career in the law. " He completed his post-secondary education at Harvard, earning his undergraduate degree in 1965 and his Ph.D. in 1971.
However, he was lucky enough to have Erik Erikson as a tutor. Howard’s interest inpsychology and social sciences grew. "My mind was really opened when I went to Harvard College and had the opportunity to study under individuals such as psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, sociologist David Riesman, and cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner who were creating knowledge about human beings. That helped set me on the course of investigating human nature, particularly how human beings think,"
He entered Harvard’s doctoral program in 1996, and in the following year became part of the Project Zero research team on arts education. Project Zero provided an environment in which Howard Gardner could begin to explore his interest in human cognition. Gardner is married to Ellen Winner. He was divorced from the well-respected developmental psychologist, educator, and author Judith (Krieger) Gardner, who passed away in 1994. Gardner has four children.
Career History of Gardner
Most of Gardner's post secondary education has taken place at Harvard University. He was inspired by his readings of Jean Piaget to be trained in developmental psychology; he also studied neuropsychology. Gardner has also worked closely with the psycholinguist Roger Brown and during his undergraduate years worked with renowned psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Gardner studied for an Bachelor of Arts degree in social relations at Harvard (1965) with thesis titled The retirement community in America and read philosophy and sociology at the London School of Economics from 1965 to 1966. He was awarded a doctor of philosophy degree in social and developmental psychology from Harvard in 1971 for thesis titled The development of sensitivity to figural and stylistic aspects of paintings.
In an effort to synthesize his two lines of work, one dealing with cognitive and symbol using capacities of normal and gifted children and the other dealing with brain damage in adults, he developed and introduced his theory of multiple intelligences in his 1983 book Frames of Mind.
He began teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1986. While he is widely traveled and has conducted research in China throughout the 1980s, his entire adult career has been spent in Cambridge. The focus of his work for the past fifteen years has been in the Good Work Project. Gardner's work is often described as "an effort to understand and explicate the broadest and highest reaches of human thought, with a particular focus on the development and breakdown of intellectual capacities, broadly construed." By choice, Gardner has not undertaken any major editorial or professional roles. He sees himself as an independent scholar and a public intellectual.
Gardner currently serves as the Chairman of Steering Committee for Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Awards:
· 1981, MacArthur Prize Fellowship
· 1987, William James Award, American Psychological Association
· 1990, University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education
· 2000, John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
· 2011, Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences
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