William Damon

William Damon is Professor of Education at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Hoover Institution. He is one of the world's leading researchers on human development across the lifespan, and he has pioneered the scientific study of purpose in life. Damon is author of The Path to Purpose; Greater Expectations (winner of the Parent's Choice Book Award); Some Do Care: Lives of Moral Commitment (with Anne Colby); Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi); and A Round of Golf with my Father: The New Psychology of Exploring your Past to Make Peace with your Present. Damon’s work in recent years includes a study of the development of purpose in adulthood and a study of purpose in American higher education. Damon has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.