Interview with Howard E. Gruber

Howard E. Gruber is currently Adjunct Visiting Professor of Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the creative process. Gruber was educated at Brooklyn College and at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, where he received a Ph.D. in 1950 in psychology. His interest in the history of science, particularly in the work of Charles Darwin, led to several important discoveries about the creative process and to additional study of developmental psychology in Geneva, Switzerland with Jean Piaget.Gruber taught at Queens University (Canada) and at the University of Colorado, USA. He was Chair of the Psychology Department in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York and Co-director at the Institute for Cognitive Studies of Rutgers University, USA. From 1983 to 1988 he was Professor of Genetic Psychology at the University of Geneva. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the Ford Foundation for Higher Education.Gruber's book, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (2nd ed.) (1981) received the Phi Beta Kappa Award for books in science, was recognized by the New York Times Book Review as one of the seven best books of the year, and was nominated for the National Book Award. The Essential Piaget (1977/1995) (written and edited with Jacques Vonèche) is considered the most authoritative anthology of Piaget's work. Gruber's most recent book, co-authored and co-edited with Doris B. Wallace, is Creative People at Work: Twelve Cognitive Case Studies (1989).