Life and Career
Richard Gregory was born in London, the son of Christopher Clive Langton Gregory and Helen Patricia. His father was an astronomer and the first Director of the University of London Observatory.
Gregory served with the Royal Air Force's Signals branch during World War II, and after the war earned an RAF scholarship to the Downing College, Cambridge. One of Sir Frederic Bartlett's last pupils at Cambridge, Gregory admitted to having been inspired by him. He was made an Honorary Fellow of Downing in 1999.
In 1967, with Prof. Donald Michie and Prof. Christopher Longuet-Higgins FRS, he founded the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception, a forerunner of the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. He was Head of the Bionics Research Laboratory, Professor of Bionics, and Department Chairman 1968-70.
He was a founding member of the Experimental Psychology Society and served as its President in 1981-2.
He collaborated with W. E. Hick for the latter's influential paper "On the rate of gain of information". In fact, he commented "... I was the only subject for his gain of information experiment to complete the course, as he was the only other subject and he packed it in when the apparatus fell apart".
In 1978, he founded The Exploratory, an applied science centre in Bristol. This was the first of its kind in the UK. In 1989, he was appointed Osher Visiting Fellow of the Exploratorium, a similar scientific education centre in San Francisco, California.
Gregory suggested Hermann von Helmholtz as his hero from past psychology, describing him as "... the modern founder of the science of perception".
He appeared on, and been an advisor to, numerous science-related television programmes in the UK and worldwide. His particular interest was in optical illusions and what these revealed about human perception. He authored and edited several books, notably Eye and Brain and Mind in Science. His hobby was punning (making puns) and he was also a guest on Desert Island Discs.
He died on 17 May 2010 at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, having suffered a stroke a few days earlier, surrounded by family and friends.
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