- After military service during the Korean War, he graduated from what is now the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He received a doctorate in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1958, and joined the Yale faculty a year later.
- His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who sold produce, and plucked and sold chickens. Starting at age 8, he sold fruit and vegetables from a horse-drawn wagon. His family received help from a settlement house, an institution, once common in large cities, that assisted immigrant families with social and medical needs and English-language skills. Dr. Zigler used the settlement house as a model for Head Start and other programs.
- He was a child psychologist and one of the principal founders of the Head Start program. It began in 1965 as a summer program for preschool children; after two years, it was expanded to go year-round.
- He was a long-time faculty member at Yale University, where he taught psychology and directed a center for the study of childhood development.
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