Gordon Bower, a research psychologist known for his thoughtful and creative experiments detailing the inner workings of memory, died June 17 at age 87 from complications related to pulmonary fibrosis.
Bower spent the entirety of his professional career at Stanford University, where he first attended a workshop in 1957 as a graduate student. During the next 49 years, Bower grew the reputation of the university’s psychology department, publishing seminal work on the use of mnemonic devices and narratives in learning and teasing apart how information is organized in the brain. Bower also mentored more than 50 PhD students, Stanford News reports, many of whom went on to their own successful careers. For his contributions to the field, Bower was awarded the nation’s highest scientific honor, the President’s National Medal of Science, in 2005.
“It seems that no matter what we aspire to do, we need giants to inspire us,” Barbara ...
