Ian P. Howard
| Ian Porteus Howard | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | Ian Porteus Howard July 20, 1927 Lancashire |
| Died | June 1, 2013 (aged 85) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | UK and Canadian |
| Fields | Psychology, Visual perception |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester, Durham University |
Ian Porteus Howard, BSc, PhD (July 20, 1927 – June 1, 2013) was a Canadian psychologist and researcher in visual perception at York University in Toronto.
Howard was born in Lancashire, England, close to the Yorkshire border. He studied for a BSc at Manchester University, graduating in 1952. Howard held academic positions in Departments of Psychology at Durham University (1953-1964) (from which he obtained his PhD in 1965), at New York University (1965), and at York University in Toronto (1966-2013). At York University, he contributed to the development of the Department of Psychology and, in 1992 founded the Centre for Vision Research (CVR).
While at York, Howard became full professor. Upon retirement in 1993, he became Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, a position he held until his death.
Howard was renowned for his research into human visual perception.
In June 2013, Howard had an h-index of 35.
During his time at York, Howard hired Martin J. Steinbach as his first postdoctoral fellow (1968) and supervised four PhD students.
In 1956, Howard married Antonie (Toni) Eber. They had three children (Neil, Martin, and Ruth Howard.) As of June 2013, they had seven grandchildren (Colin, Graeme, Alice, Katie, Shifra, Helah, and Eli).
Howard died of cancer on 1 June 2013.
Howard's research areas included human spatial orientation (how we tell whether we are upright or lying down), stereopsis (how we sense the distance of objects from our eyes from the differences in the images in the eyes), eye movements, and perceptual ambiguity. Howard was reluctant to use computer-simulated stimuli for his studies; Howard's approach was to study visual perception in realistic settings with real objects, unlike many others in the field, who studied it using pictures of objects. Realistic settings Howard constructed included a full-size rotating room and a 3-m-diameter sphere. He also researched human orientation in microgravity using the "vomit comet" and the space shuttle.
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