Dean Keith Simonton

Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis

Dean Keith Simonton is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, he received his 1975 PhD in Social Psychology from Harvard University. His research program spans various questions associated with genius, creativity, leadership, talent, and aesthetics. Simonton’s curriculum vita lists more than 500 publications, including 13 books, namely: Genius, Creativity, and Leadership; Why Presidents Succeed; Scientific Genius; Psychology, Science, and History; Greatness; Genius and Creativity; Origins of Genius; Great Psychologists and Their Times; Creativity in Science; Genius 101; Great Flicks; Social Science of Cinema; and, most recently, The Wiley Handbook of Genius. Simonton received the William James Book Award, Sir Francis Galton Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Study of Creativity, the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts, the Henry A. Murray Award for “distinguished contributions to the study of individual lives and whole persons,” the Joseph B. Gittler Award for “the most scholarly contribution to the philosophical foundation of psychological knowledge,” the Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Media Psychology Award, the Theoretical Innovation Prize in Personality and Social Psychology, the George A. Miller Outstanding Article Award, the E. Paul Torrance and President’s Awards from the National Association for Gifted Children, and the Robert S. Daniel Award for Four-Year College/University Teaching. His next book project, tentatively titled The Psychology of Civilization: The Genius as the Creator of History, hopes to integrate the results from his lifelong research program, focusing on creative genius.

Participant In:

The Helix Center is pleased to announce receipt of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in support of a series of fourteen roundtables addressing big questions in the physical, natural, and biological sciences and the humanities. The topics are: Knowledge and Limitations; The Span of Infinity; Complexity and Emergence; The Search for Immortality;  The Sublime Experience; The Meditative State; The… read more »

Understanding Genius

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Past Event

Schopenhauer defined genius in relation to the more conventional quality of talent. “Talent hits a target others miss. Genius hits a target no one sees.” Is originality indeed the sine qua non of genius? Is there, following Kant, a radical separation of the aesthetic genius from the brilliant scientific mind? What further distinctions might be made between… read more »