astronomy

Michael Corballis

Michael Corballis is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Michael Corballis rather than just read about it. In short: Michael Charles Corballis (10 September 1936 – 13 November 2021) was a New Zealand and Canadian psychologist and author. He was Emeritus Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland.

Key takeaways

Michael Corballis belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Michael Corballis to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Michael Corballis from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Michael Charles Corballis (10 September 1936 – 13 November 2021) was a New Zealand and Canadian psychologist and author. He was Emeritus Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland. His fields of research were cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, encompassing visual perception, visual imagery, attention, memory, and the evolution of language.

Early life and family Corballis was born in the farming district of Marton, New Zealand, in 1936, the eldest of four sons of sheep farmers Philip Patrick Joseph Corballis and Alice Elizabeth Harris. In 1962, Corballis married Barbara Elizabeth Wheeler. They had two sons: Paul, also a cognitive neuroscientist, and Tim, a novelist and academic. Barbara Corballis died in 2020.

Education and career Corballis received his high-school education as a boarder at Wanganui Collegiate School. He earned a Master's degree in Mathematics at the University of New Zealand in 1959 and a Master of Arts in psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1962. He then moved to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he completed a PhD in psychology in 1965. From 1966 to 1968, Corballis returned to University of Auckland as a lecturer (assistant professor). In 1968, he returned to McGill, first as an assistant professor of psychology, rising to full professor in 1975. In 1978, Corballis was appointed professor of psychology at the University of Auckland. From 1993 to 2000, he was also Director of the Research Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience within the department. In 2008, Corballis became emeritus professor. In 2014, he became the university's Inaugural Creativity Fellow. Corballis remained active at the university until his death on 13 November 2021. In July 2021, Corballis and six other University of Auckland professors wrote a controversial letter "In Defence of Science" to the New Zealand Listener magazine, in which they said that Māori knowledge should not be considered in the same category as science because of the former's spiritual content. Notable students include Jenni Ogden and Faraneh Vargha-Khadem.

Research During Corballis's years at McGill, the main focus of his research was in cognitive neuroscience, analyzing complex cognitive systems such as perception, attention, and memory, and initiating a research program on cerebral asymmetry. He continued those research areas at University of Auckland. In the 21st century, Corballis's turned to evolutionary biology, contributing significantly to complex cognitive processes. Of great interest was his hypothesis that human language evolved from gestures, expressed in the book From hand to mouth; it received more than 1500 citations in its first year. Over his career, Corballis published more than 400 scientific papers and book chapters, and 14 books. His work was cited more than 27,000 times, giving him a h-index of 77. Corballis supervised the work of at least 14 research assistants, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, who, in turn supervised more than 50 students and fellows, leaving a lasting human scientific legacy.

Service Corballis served in many roles that supported various academic pursuits. In 2009, he was president of the International Neuropsychological Society. Corballis edited the New Zealand Journal of Psychology from 1994 to 1997. He founded the journal Laterality in 1995 and co-edited it until 2008. He also was a member of numerous editorial boards and wrote numerous reviews of scientific manuscripts submitted to scores of journals, of which 137 are recorded in Publons. Corballis chaired University of Auckland Review Committees, including the Department of Sociology (1992) and the Department of Engineering Science (2003). He also chaired or was a member of other universities' reviews, including University of Queensland, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Otago, and University of Canterbury. Corballis performed numerous administrative taks for the Royal Society of New Zealand and for the New Zealand Psychological Society. Corballis served on various research granting and assessing bodies, including New Zealand's Marsden Fund, Health Research Council of New Zealand, Performance Based Research Fund, Australia's Australian Research Council, and Canada's National Research Council.

Honours and awards Corballis was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1982. In 1999, Corballlis was awarded the Shorland Medal by the New Zealand Association of Scientists. The same year he was awarded a James Cook Research Fellowship for research into tracking brain activity. In the 2002 Queen's Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to psychological science. In 2016, he received the Royal Society of New Zealand's Rutherford Medal.

Death Corballis died in November 2021, after a short period of cancer. Among those who paid tribute to him was the Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who described his "beloved former professor" as having done "brilliant work on handedness, mental rotation," and the evolution of language. He further described Corballis as "urbane, charming, witty, irreverent."

Publications

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Michael Corballis

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Michael Corballis claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Michael Corballis before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Michael Corballis ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Michael Corballis

In research: Michael Corballis appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Michael Corballis in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Michael Corballis is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1936 births, 2021 deaths, 20th-century New Zealand psychologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Michael Corballis outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Michael Corballis in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Michael Corballis means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Michael Corballis out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Michael Corballis in simple terms?

Why does Michael Corballis matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Michael Corballis?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Michael Corballis.