Awards

National Academies - 1965

American Association for the Advancement of Science

About Lloyd Peterson

Lloyd R. Peterson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 1, 1922. At Gustavus Adolphus College, he initially took up theological studies as an undergraduate, but soon switched his focus to psychology. He later obtained his M.A. in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1954 in psychology from the University of Minnesota. At Minnesota, Lloyd began his studies of memory, at first in rats. Later at IU, he began studying memory in humans and became one of the pioneers in the just-beginning field of cognitive psychology. Lloyd was appointed as an assistant professor at IU Bloomington in 1957 and promoted to professor in 1965. He retired in 1987.

Lloyd's name will always be associated with the groundbreaking work that he and his wife, Margaret Intons-Peterson, carried out on short-term memory. Their initial study is one of the most frequently cited papers in experimental psychology. The "forgetting curve," as it is now known, has since been reproduced in hundreds of textbooks. The study became one of the cornerstones of what has been termed "short-term memory" and helped move that important concept from the laboratory to general awareness. His research later turned to the role of imagery in memory and on multitasking by both computers and people. Peterson passed away January 12, 2011.