Dr. Susan Carey

Class of 1960 Susan Carey received her B.A. degree from Radcliffe College. She proceeded to teach school in Tanzania, then won a Fulbright Fellowship to London University, before moving to Harvard University for graduate school. She earned her PhD from Harvard in experimental psychology in 1971. After previously teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University, Dr. Carey joined the Harvard University faculty in 2001. She holds a named professorship and serves as Chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard. Dr. Carey has been awarded the 2009 Rumelhart Prize, the highest honor awarded in the field of Cognitive Science, for her career of field-changing theoretical and empirical work on cognitive development. She is a member of the most prestigious honorary society for scientists in the United States, the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the British Academy and numerous other esteemed selections and appointments. Dr. Carey is the author of an extensive number of published articles, books, and chapters in compiled books and texts. Her research concerns conceptual development, seeking to explain the human capacity to think thoughts so beyond the reach of other animals. She studies the minds of non-human animals and humans to help uncover the hidden working of the minds of human infants, young children, and adults. Her studies have been widely acknowledged for their contributions in advancing cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and the comparative study of human and non-human primates.