Cole, Michael

Abstract Born in 1938 and raised in the United States, Michael Cole had early formative experiences in experimental laboratory studies of human learning under the mentorship of William Estes at Indiana University (Ph.D. 1962). He then spent a year as a post‐doctoral student at Moscow University in Russia (1962–1963) under the guidance of Alexander Luria, who provided an introduction to the work of Lev Vygotsky. In the 1970s, Cole edited and co‐edited English translations of some of both these authors' key publications. From 1966 to 1969 he held an appointment at the University of California, Irvine, and from 1969 to 1978 at the Rockefeller University, New York. At Rockefeller he founded (1971) the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC), which attracted a wide spectrum of cultural and cross‐cultural researchers from around the world. The base of LCHC moved with Cole to the University of California, San Diego in 1978, where it became an increasingly Internet‐mediated resource for international conferencing, as well as spawning, in 1994, the multidisciplinary journal Mind, Culture and Activity . The various listserv‐supported discussions known as “XLCHC and other discussions grouped under the XFAMILY electronic umbrella” and the journal have afforded influential fora for the “substantial international scholarly community which takes a serious interest in study of mind as a cultural‐historical process of human development” ( http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca ). Since 1979, Cole has been professor of communication, psychology and human development at the University of California, San Diego.