Douglas Medin

Douglas L. Medin
Born	(1944-06-13)June 13, 1944
Alma mater	Moorhead State College, University of South Dakota
Spouse	Linda Powers
Awards	Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology
Institutions	Northwestern University
Thesis	Form perception and pattern reproduction by monkeys (1968)
Doctoral advisor	Roger Davis

Douglas L. "Doug" Medin is the Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Early life and education

Medin first became interested in psychology when he was an eighth-grader in Algona, Iowa. During this time, he and his classmates were sorted into two groups depending on their singing abilities; Medin was assigned to the non-singers' group. He attended Moorhead State College, graduating in 1965 with a B.A. in psychology, and went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of South Dakota in 1966 and 1968, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis focused on the way that rhesus monkeys perceive shapes.

Career

Medin joined Rockefeller University in 1968 as a postdoctoral fellow, where he became an assistant professor the following year. He remained at Rockefeller until 1978, when he joined the University of Illinois as an associate professor. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1989, and remained there for three years until joining the faculty of Northwestern University in 1992, because it "held better professional opportunities for his wife, Linda Powers," according to a profile of Medin in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Research

Medin is best known for his research on concepts and categorization. He has also studied the "role of expertise and culture in the conceptual organization of biological categories."

Honors and awards

Medin was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, and into the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.