In 1983, a jewish family escaped capture from the Nazi's and fled Germany with their first son Eric; who later passed in a sleigh accident shortly before Howards birth. While Gardener grew up neither of these events were discussed, but was the reason why Howard was never allowed to participate in sports and physical activities, which drove Howard to the books. Howard began as a student at Harvard in 1961. At the time he was studying history but with some influence he changed his major to social relations and again to focus on cognitive psychology. He went on to complete his PHD and continued working at Harvard. Which is where he began to work on his "Project Zero" which focused on the study of artistic thought and creativity in the arts, along with humanistic and scientific disciplines.

Howard believed that there were multiple intelligences for different types of people. Gardner believed that in each individual person the lied various levels of intelligence making each person unigue. Gardners the intelligences he observed were linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinaesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Gardners theory is that intelligence does not sufficiently cover the wide variety of human abilities. Gardners belief basically says that one student may be good at spelling another good at multiplication, this does not make one student smarter than the other. This theory considers one student strong in one area and another students strength lies in another area. I think Gardners beliefs stand for an equal opportunity for all students to express who they are and what they are good at.