Howard Gardner is not one but four professors. He is professor of cognition and education at Harvard University's School of Education, professor of psychology at that university and professor of neurology ('from the neck up', he says) at Boston University's famous School of Medicine. Last year he was awarded a professorship at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
Gardner's chief claim to fame, however, is as the originator of the 'theory of multiple intelligences' (MI) in his 1983 book Frames of Mind, updated in 1993 and extended in Intelligence Reframed (2000).
In these, Gardner argues that, in the west, we have put too much emphasis on just two ways of being intelligent. We value logical/mathematical and linguistic modes of thought above all other ways of being bright. Even today you can't be a teacher, enter university or be interviewed for many jobs unless you can prove at least GCSE ability in these areas.
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