| Wayne Allen Wickelgren | |
| Birth Date: | 4 June 1938 |
| Birth Place: | Hammond, Indiana, U.S. |
| Death Date: | (aged 67) |
| Death Place: | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Children: | 5 |
Wayne Allen Wickelgren was a professor of psychology at Columbia University.
Wickelgren was born on June 4, 1938, to Herman and Alma Larson Wickelgren. He graduated from Hammond High School.[1]
Wickelgren attended Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude with the Class of 1960. He studied social relations. He received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962.[2]
In 1962, Wickelgren started as an assistant professor in the Psychology department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3] While there, he rose to full Professor and researched problem-solving, learning, and language.[4]
In 1969, he started as a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon where he worked until 1987.[5] From 1987 until his death in 2005, he was an Adjunct Research Scientist at Columbia University.[6]
Wicklegren's work was used by James McClelland and David Rumelhart to develop the Wickelphone which is a sequence of 3 letters or symbols used together in a word.
He was a member of the International Neural Network Society, the Society for Neuroscience, the Psychonomic Society, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Society for Mathematical Psychology.
In 1962, Wickelgren married Barbara Gordon-Lickey. They had 2 children: Ingrid Wickelgren (1967) and lawyer Abraham Wickelgren (1969). The couple divorced in 1972. With partner Norma Graham, he had 3 children: physicist Peter W. Graham (1980), mathematician Kirsten Wickelgren (1981), and Jeanette Wickelgren (1985). Wickelgren was survived by his partner Norma Graham.[12]