BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Cornell
University.
Urie Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow, Russia on April 29, 1917 and moved to the
United States six years later. He attended Cornell University where he double majored
in psychology and music in 1938. He received his M.A. at Harvard and his Ph.D. from the
University of Michigan in 1942. That same year he was inducted into the Army where he
served as a psychologist in the Air Corps and the Office of Strategic Services and then
served in the Army Medical Corps. In 1948 he accepted a position in the Dept. of Human
Development and Family Studies at Cornell. He did extensive research and writings in the
field of human development, international comparisons of child rearing, and his development
of the theories of Human Ecology and the Bio-ecological Model. He was one of the founding
members of Head Start. He received six honorary degrees, and was awarded numerous awards,
including in 1996 the first American Psychological Association Award for Lifetime Contribution
to Developmental Psychology in the service of Science and Society.
