Background
Zener was born in Indianapolis, Indiana the son of Clarence and Ida Zener, and brother of Katharine (later Mrs Katharine Hurmiston) and Clarence (later Doctor Clarence Zener).
Zener was born in Indianapolis, Indiana the son of Clarence and Ida Zener, and brother of Katharine (later Mrs Katharine Hurmiston) and Clarence (later Doctor Clarence Zener).
He received a Bachelor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1923, followed by Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in psychology from Harvard University in 1924 and 1926.
He then went on to spend a year as a United States National Research Council Fellow at the University of Berlin before returning to the United States. After a year of teaching psychology at Princeton University, Zener took up what was to be a lifelong post with Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. Rhine called cards bearing these symbols "Zener cards" in honor of his colleague. Zener"s later work focused on theories of perception and the analysis of perceptual experience.
The resultant Zener-Gaffron theory combined a psychological analysis of perception with then-contemporary findings from the field of biological neuroscience.
Zener was the recipient of the only grant ever given for psychological research by the Ford Foundation Program in Humanities and the Arts. Zener was appointed Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Duke University in 1961, after having served there as the director of graduate studies in psychology for nearly twenty years.
The Zener Auditorium (Room 130, Sociology-Psychology Building) of Duke University is named after him.