Vera John-Steiner

VERONKA JOHN-STEINER Veronka (Vera) John-Steiner, age 87, died on December 6, 2017 at her home in Santa Fe, NM, surrounded by loved ones. She was a professor of Linguistics and Educational Psychology at the University of New Mexico for over 40 years. She was born in Budapest, Hungary, to Sophie and Ferenc Polgar. Together with her parents and younger brother Steven, she arrived in the United States after World War II as a refugee, having been deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust. After receiving a BA from Columbia University, she went on to receive a doctorate in Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Chicago, where she married neuroscientist Roy John and was active in student politics, particularly in opposition to McCarthyism. As a participant in the Civil Rights movement, she met such figures as Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X. Her interest in education, language acquisition and psycholinguistics led her to work on language-related aspects of the Head Start program and to carry out collaborative projects on the Navajo reservation. After becoming a faculty member at the University of California Los Angeles, she went on to teach at the University of Rochester and Yeshiva University. With her second husband, the writer Stan Steiner, she moved to Santa Fe in the late 1960s. Joining the Psychology Department at UNM, she became a Regents Professor. For her, one of the most rewarding parts of her work was to serve as a mentor to innumerable students at UNM and elsewhere. She was a role model for many, particularly young women scholars, always ready to exchange ideas, to help, and to encourage their growth. Over the years, Veronka became renowned internationally as one of the pioneering and most influential interpreters of the work of groundbreaking developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. She won the William James Award from the American Psychological Association for her first book, “Notebooks of the Mind.” Her second book, “Creative Collaboration,” showed that creativity grows out of human interaction, not merely from the isolated individual genius. Among her other books were “Creative Collaboration” and “Loving and Hating Mathematics,” which she co-authored with her partner and long-time collaborator, the mathematician Reuben Hersh. She is survived by her partner Reuben, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren Paul Steiner, Sándor John, Suki John, Laura John-Mora, Rafael Cocchi and Alex Mora, and her extended family including her friends, collaborators, colleagues and students. Memorial Service will be on Friday, December 8, 2017 at 2:00pm at the Kiva Chapel of Light following Internment at Memorial Gardens.