Gibson, James J.

Basic Biographical Information

James J. Gibson was born on January 27, 1904, in McConnelsville, Ohio, and he spent most of his childhood years in Wilmette, Illinois, near Chicago. After attending Northwestern University for 1 year (1921), he enrolled in Princeton University, where he was an undergraduate philosophy major, graduating in 1925. Gibson took his first psychology course in his senior year and stayed on at Princeton for graduate studies, which he completed under H.S. Langfeld in 1928. In the fall of that year, Gibson accepted his first academic position at Smith College, where he remained for much of the next two decades. Among his outstanding students at Smith was Eleanor Jack, whom he married in 1932.

In 1941, Gibson joined the Army Air Force to help develop selection procedures for pilots, and during that time, he conducted groundbreaking research in perception that would shape the remainder of his career. Returning briefly to Smith College after the war, Gibson then...