Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird

Timeline

1. 1964–1976

   Language and Perception

   At University College London, he earns a BA in 1964 and a PhD in 1967, and he is also an accomplished jazz pianist. In 1971–1972, he is a Visiting Member at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. In 1976, he and George Miller publish Language and Perception, a book about how people understand language.

2. 1979–1989

   Sussex, Cambridge and Mental Models

   He is professor of experimental psychology at Sussex from 1979 to 1982 and professor of applied psychology at Cambridge from 1983 to 1989. His 1983 book Mental Models presents a unified theory of comprehension, inference and consciousness.

3. 1989

   Joining Princeton

   He joins Princeton's psychology department in 1989.

4. 1991

   Deduction and a fellowship

   In 1991, he and Ruth Byrne publish Deduction, and the Royal Society elects him a Fellow. His research shows that people reason by constructing mental models of possibilities.

5. 1994

   Stuart Professor at Princeton

   He becomes Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton in 1994. His studies of music produce computational models of improvisation, consonance and dissonance, and emotion.

6. 2007

   National Academy membership

   He is elected to membership in the US National Academy of Sciences in 2007.

7. 2023–2024

   Models of human reasoning

   In 2023, he coauthors What Should Replace the Turing Test? with Marco Ragni. In 2024, he coauthors a paper on models of possibilities as a basis for human reasoning.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus professor at Princeton

   As of October 2026, he is Emeritus Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton University.