Howard Earl Gardner is an American developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University. He was a founding member of Harvard Project Zero in 1967 and held leadership roles at that research center from 1972 to 2023. Since 1995, he has been the co-director of The Good Project.

The theory of multiple intelligences proposes the differentiation of human intelligence into specific intelligences, rather than defining intelligence as a single, general ability. The theory has been very popular among educators around the world for 40 years despite being criticized by mainstream psychology for its lack of empirical evidence, its dependence on subjective judgement and its overall unscientific nature.