Tony Dickinson

Dickinson graduated in psychology from the University of Manchester in 1967^[4] and earned a PhD at the University of Sussex in 1971,^[4][5] continuing his academic career there as a postdoctoral assistant to Nicholas Mackintosh.^[6] He moved to the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge in 1977, where he lectured in associative learning.^[6] He became professor in 1999 and has been emeritus professor and a fellow of Hughes Hall since his retirement in 2011.^[1]

Dickinson's research focuses on learning, memory, motivation, and future planning in both humans and other animals,^[2][3][7] and has influenced "incentive" theories of motivation and addiction.^[8] His recent work includes theories of actions and habits,^[7][9][10] drug addiction,^[11] and hedonic pleasure.^[12] His most highly cited paper is a 1998 Nature collaboration with Cambridge colleague Nicky Clayton on episodic-like memory in scrub jays.^[13][14] Other notable collaborators include Trevor Robbins and Barry Everitt (on mechanisms of addiction),^[11] Bernard Balleine (on motivation and hedonic pleasure),^[12][15] John M. Pearce (with whom Dickinson worked on animal learning at both Sussex and Cambridge),^[16] and Wolfram Schultz (with whom Dickinson has worked on the neuronal mechanisms of rewards, punishments, and other stimuli).^[17]

In 2001, Dickinson was elected the Sir Frederic Bartlett lecturer by the Experimental Psychology Society, an annual award recognising "distinction in experimental psychology... over an extended period",^[18] and delivered the 28th Bartlett Memorial Lecture on "Causal Learning" at Cambridge in July 2000.^[19][20] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003.^[3]