Dedre Gentner
Dedre Gentner is a cognitive scientist whose work on analogy connects studies of human reasoning with artificial intelligence. She studied physics and psychology, then held research and teaching posts in Washington, at Bolt Beranek and Newman, and in Illinois. Her structure-mapping theory explains analogy through shared relations, and her coauthored Structure-Mapping Engine paper brought that work into AI research. At Northwestern, she helped found the Cognitive Science Program and directed it for more than two decades. She received the 2016 Rumelhart Prize and the 2026 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science; as of October 2026, she is Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Psychology at Northwestern.
Timeline
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1962–1974
A physics education
She earns a physics bachelor's degree with honors at UC Berkeley, studies social sciences at the University of Chicago, and completes a psychology PhD at UC San Diego in 1974.
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1974–1982
Teaching and research posts
She teaches psychology at the University of Washington, then works as a scientist at Bolt Beranek and Newman.
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1983
A theory of analogy
Her paper Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy explains analogical reasoning through shared relationships.
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1989–1990
An engine for analogy
With Brian Falkenhainer and Kenneth Forbus, she publishes the 1989 paper “The structure-mapping engine: Algorithm and examples” in Artificial Intelligence. After faculty work at Illinois, she joins Northwestern in 1990; the theory leads to a computational model of analogy and similarity.
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1990–2015
Building cognitive science
At Northwestern, she helps found the Cognitive Science Program and directs it through 2015.
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2016
The Rumelhart Prize
The Cognitive Science Society awards her the David E. Rumelhart Prize for interdisciplinary work on the mind, learning, reasoning, language, and mental representation.
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2026
The Franklin Institute medal
She receives the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science for work on human thought, including language, metaphors, maps, and analogies.
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As of October 2026
A Northwestern professorship
She is Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Psychology at Northwestern. Her research interests include analogical processing, language, and learning.
Sources and credits
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