The University of Barcelona pays a posthumous tribute to Nicholas Mackintosh
The University of Barcelona presents the Medal d'Or to Nicholas Mackintosh
Recently we received the news that on November 11 will be the act of delivery of the Medal d'Or from the University of Barcelona to Nicholas J. Mackintosh , Professor Emeritus of the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge from 1981 to 2002.
Mackintosh had been proposed Doctor Honoris Causa by the UB months before his death.
The trajectory of Nicholas Mackintosh
Professor Mackintosh, who died in February 2015, He was internationally recognized for his contributions in the field of psychometrics, intelligence and in the study of learning processes in animals. s . Some of his main works as an author are books The Psychology of Animal Learning (1974), about Comparative Psychology, and Cyril Burt: Fraud or Famed (1995), although its most important text is possibly IQ and Human Intelligence (1998), which served to recognize and focus on the problem of low performance in multiethnic schools in the United Kingdom and also pointed to conclusions whose impact goes far beyond Experimental Psychology.
Nicholas Mackintosh helped to discover many of the psychological mechanisms through which intelligence is expressed and, through this type of research, made it possible for us to change our conception about the nature of cognition, learning and intellect. For his career as a researcher, he was awarded with the Biological Medal and with him President's Award from the British Psychological Society in 1981 and in 1986, respectively.
Regarding its relationship with the University of Barcelona, its collaboration with Victoria Díez Chamizo stands out , professor of the Department of Basic Psychology of the UB, in research focused on associative conditioning and learning and whose results served to reinforce the hypothesis that spatial learning has many similarities with simple associative learning.
Your role as a trainer and lecturer
Beyond his career as a researcher, from his role as teacher mentor and lecturer, he emphasized the need to recognize the limitations of research carried out around the concept of "intelligence" and the construction of factor G, so as not to venture conclusions about the simple fact of its coincidence with the political or ideological motivations of each one. In the same way, Nicholas Mackintosh was critical of the oversized scope that the application of neuroscience could have in specific legal courses.
Further, He devoted a large part of his life to teaching university training and participating in conferences attended by younger students , both in Cambridge and in many other universities around the world that he attended on time.
Where and when is the event celebrated?
The act of delivery of the medal will be made on Wednesday, November 11, 2015 at 12 o'clock , in the auditorium of the historic building of the University of Barcelona (Plaça de la Universitat). You can find more information about the event by clicking on this link.
