Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner helped found cognitive psychology, challenging the behaviorist orthodoxy that dominated the field at mid-century by arguing that perception and learning are actively constructed by the mind rather than simply conditioned into it. His work reshaped educational theory, influencing how curricula are built around a learner's developmental stage rather than rote repetition. A 2002 survey ranked him the 28th most cited psychologist of the twentieth century, a career that spanned Harvard, Oxford, and NYU's law school.