Jerome Myers, 93, professor emeritus in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences, died May 18.

Image

A winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Myers spent his entire professional career as a member of the faculty at UMass Amherst, from his arrival in 1957 until his retirement in 1992.

His research spanned probability learning, mathematical psychology, memory retrieval and priming, and text comprehension and discourse processing, and he established the program in cognitive psychology at UMass Amherst. Widely known for the “Resonance Model,” a foundational theory of how memory drives reading comprehension, Myers received the 2015 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Text and Discourse and a lifetime achievement award by the Federation of Associations of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS).

Funeral services were previously held at the convenience of Myers’ family, but a complete obituary, as published May 26 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, can be found below.
 

Jerome L. Myers, 93, died on May 18, 2026. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. from Syracuse University in 1953 and his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1957. He spent his whole career (1957-1992) on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts. At UMass, he established the program in cognitive psychology. His research spanned probability learning, mathematical psychology, memory retrieval and priming, and text comprehension and discourse processing. He was best known for the “Resonance Model,” a foundational theory of how memory drives reading comprehension. He received the 2015 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Text and Discourse and a lifetime achievement award by the Federation of Associations of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS). He served as the editor of the quantitative section of the Psychological Bulletin. A winner of the UMass Distinguished Teaching Award, he authored premier graduate textbooks in research design and statistics, namely, “Fundamentals of Experimental Design” (3 editions), and “Experimental Design and Statistical Analysis” (4 editions). Jerry was a beloved mentor who inspired many students with his passion for scholarship.

A warm and loving family man, Jerry enjoyed the outdoors and being active, hiking into his late ‘80s and traveling throughout the world with friends and family. He is survived by Nancy, his wife of 72 years, his son Jeffrey and daughter Laura (Peter Haas), grandsons Joshua (Rose) and Daniel (Aleksandra) Haas and four great-granddaughters.