William Reichenstein Uttal (March 24, 1931 – February 9, 2017)[2][3] was an American psychologist and engineer known for his criticism of cognitive neuroscience, and for his advocacy for distributed neural processing.
[4] In Uttal's obituary in the American Journal of Psychology, Stanley Coren wrote that "His distinguished academic career is difficult to classify, but his specialty probably should be put under the heading "cognitive science".
"[3] Uttal studied at Ohio State University, where he earned a BS in Physics and a PhD in experimental psychology and biophysics, then joined IBM, where he worked until 1963.
In 1985, he retired from the University Michigan to concentrate on writing and relocated to Hawaii to work with the US Navy.
Two years later, he became chair of the psychology department at Arizona State University in the school of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, remaining there until his retirement (for a second time) in 1999.