George A. Miller

American psychologist (1920–2012), one of the founders of cognitive psychology and, separately, of psycholinguistics — the corpus's nearest existing corner for where his work would otherwise land. Held posts at Harvard, MIT and Rockefeller; later directed the development of WordNet.

Author of "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (Psychological Review, 1956) — one of the most-cited papers in psychology, and the source of the popular shorthand "Miller's Law" for a short-term-memory capacity of roughly seven items (a reading Miller himself pushed back on; his own finding was that the limit applies to chunks, not raw items, and he called the emphasis on the number seven a coincidence he was "persecuted" by).

Cited in the-joy-of-writing for the paper's opening line — "My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer" — as an example of a scientific voice with personality, held up against a present-day writing style Danckert worries is converging toward something flatter.

Related

the-joy-of-writing · sapir-whorf-hypothesis · cognitive-miser