Cognitive science
The term "cognitive science" was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research. In the same decade, the journal "Cognitive Science" and the Cognitive Science Society were founded. The founding meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was held at the University of California, San Diego in 1979, which resulted in cognitive science becoming an internationally visible enterprise. In 1972, Hampshire College started the first undergraduate education program in Cognitive Science, led by Neil Stillings. In 1982, with assistance from Professor Stillings, Vassar College became the first institution in the world to grant an undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science. In 1986, the first Cognitive Science Department in the world was founded at the University of California, San Diego.
William J. McGill
McGill was an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1956 and then joined Columbia. He was chairman of the psychology department from 1961 to 1963 and left in 1965 to help found a psychology department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). In 1968 he accepted the job of chancellor at UCSD, after the first five offered the position turned it down.