Alfred Bloom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred H. Bloom is an American psychologist and linguist. He is the president of Swarthmore College.

According to his biography on the Swarthmore College website, under Bloom's leadership, Swarthmore has revitalized its academically rigorous Honors Program, undertaken extensive renovation and creation of academic buildings, broadened its multicultural curriculum, expanded foreign study and community empowerment programs, and established an intercultural center for students.

In 1967, Bloom received his B.A., summa cum laude in Romance languages and European civilization from Princeton University. That year, he studied in France as a Fulbright-Hays fellow. In 1974, he received his Ph.D. in psychology and social relations from Harvard University. He immediately joined Swarthmore's faculty; he served as a professor of psychology and linguistics for twelve years, before moving to Pitzer College, where he served as dean of faculty, vice president for academic affairs, and executive vice president. In 1991, he returned to Swarthmore to become the college's 13th president.

In the 1970s, he conducted psychological research investigating the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and concluded that the Chinese language's lack of counterfactual words resulted in a reduced ability to think counterfactually.

[edit] Sources

• President's Welcome and Biography, Swarthmore College [1]
• Bloom, A. H. (1979). "The Impact of Chinese Linguistic Structure on Cognitive Style." Current Anthropology 20(3).

Persondata
NAME	Bloom, Alfred Howard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Psychologist and linguist
DATE OF BIRTH	February 27, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City, New York
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH