Thomas O. Nelson Memorial

A Symposium to Honor Dr. Nelson (schedule below)

Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Dominion Ballroom, Sheraton Centre
46th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Thomas O. Nelson

The centerpiece of the meeting was a symposium in honor of Thomas O. Nelson. A schedule of the speakers is below.

Click here to view photos
from the symposium.

Tom was born in Newark, NJ, and grew up in Roselle, NJ, where, as an adolescent, he worked summers on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. He completed his undergraduate degree at Trenton State College in 1965 and his doctoral degree at the University of Illinois in 1970. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University before joining the faculty in Psychology at the University of Washington in 1971. While in Seattle he rose to the rank of Professor and also had a part-time appointment in Psychology at the University of California, Irvine. In 1995 he joined the faculty in Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he served as Area Head of the Cognitive Program. Tom was a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most recently he served as Editor of the prestigious Journal of Experimental Psychology: Language, Memory and Cognition.

Tom was a devoted father to his children Jake and Ashley and he was a dedicated outdoorsman. He enjoyed mountain climbing (he was part of an expedition that scaled Mt. Everest in 1988), basketball (he was a starter on his college basketball team as well as on his 55+ and 60+ Montgomery County league teams!), skiing (both locally and out west), and bicycling. Not to mention, hiking, rock climbing and billiards! He also enjoyed the simpler pleasures of music (his tastes were remarkably eclectic), microbrew beers (his tastes were remarkably eclectic), fine wines (he loved sampling different vineyards), traveling (especially to Europe), and gourmet cooking.

Tom died at Washington Hospital Center after open heart surgery to repair an aortal aneurysm. He never regained consciousness after the surgery.
He was a true friend and companion who will be greatly missed.