Henry Gleitman (January 4, 1925 – September 2, 2015) was a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
.
Personal life
Gleitman obtained both his bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology: the bachelor's degree from the City College of New York, and his master's from the University of California. Henry Gleitman was wed to another psychologist,
Lila R. Gleitman
Lila Ruth Gleitman (December 10, 1929 – August 8, 2021) was an American professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an internationally renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholin ...
. Together, they penned a book together called ''Phrase and Paraphrase''. The book was released in 1970. He fathered two daughters. Their names are Ellen Luchette and Claire Gleitman. Gleitman was born in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, Germany. He received his PhD in psychology from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
. He then taught at
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...
before joining the Penn faculty in 1953.
Gleitman was a
cognitive psychologist
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which he ...
with interests in
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
(especially the relationship between
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
and
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
), but he claimed, "I'm probably better identified as a general
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
whose research interests range over many of the traditional areas of psychological inquiry."
Gleitman was willing to work with students in any field of psychology if that student can interest him in his/her proposed field of research.
Gleitman is best known for his authorship of ''Psychology'', a classic textbook first published in 1981 used in many Introduction to Psychology classes, now in its eighth edition.
[Henry Gleitman, James Gross, Daniel Reisberg (2010), ''Psychology'', ]
Gleitman was married to fellow psychologist
Lila R. Gleitman
Lila Ruth Gleitman (December 10, 1929 – August 8, 2021) was an American professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an internationally renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholin ...
, an internationally renowned
language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...
researcher, who was also a professor of psychology and
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
at the University of Pennsylvania.
Major Accomplishments
In his field, Gleitman had been awarded by the American Psychological Foundation for the distinguished teaching in psychology award in 1982. He was also awarded the Abrams Award in 1988 as well as the Lindback Award in 1977. He is a very well rounded individual with many accomplishments, such as serving as president of the APA’S Division 1 (General Psychology) and Division 10 ( Psychology and the Arts). Within his five decades of teaching and educating other he has taught introductory psychology to over 40,000 students.
Gleitman had an array of interest and accomplishments, such as being a known polymath, he was also involved in the arts of theatre in which he both acted and directed while at Berkeley, Philadelphia, and New York City. Besides his interest in psychology, theatrics was a major part of life and he worked with actors of all ages ranging from children all the way up to seasoned professionals. Gleitman would refer to himself as a bigamist because when it came to psychology and theatre, he dichotomized the thought of having to choose, but always found a way to entertain both.
Quotes
"A dream is a kind of nocturnal drama to which the only price of admission is falling asleep." – Psychology
"God must have loved the C student, because he made so many of them." – Henry Gleitman
References
1925 births
German emigrants to the United States
2015 deaths
20th-century American psychologists
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Swarthmore College faculty
American cognitive scientists
Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists
University of Pennsylvania faculty
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