Roger Newland Shepard is a cognitive scientist and author of the Universal Law of Generalization. He is considered a father of research on spatial relations. Shepard obtained his Ph.D. in psychology at Yale University in 1955 under Carl Hovland, and completed post-doctoral training with George Armitage Miller at Harvard. Subsequent to this, Shepard was at Bell Labs and then a professor at Harvard before joining the faculty at Stanford University. In 1995, Shepard received the National Medal of Science for his contributions in the field of cognitive science. In 2006, he also won the Rumelhart Prize. Shepard is Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor Emeritus of Social Science at Stanford University. His students include Lynn Cooper, Leda Cosmides, Rob Fish, Jennifer Freyd, Carol L. Krumhansl, Daniel Levitin, and Geoffrey Miller. Shepard is one of the founders of the Kira Institute. 

January 30th, 1929 in Palo Alto (Age 96)