(1880–1943). Born in Prague, Wertheimer is conventionally regarded as the founder of
Gestalt psychology. Working under F. Schumann at the University of Frankfurt, he carried out an important study on apparent visual motion, published in 1912 (see
Korte's laws). His colleagues at that time included
Wolfgang Köhler and
Kurt Koffka, who acted as subjects in his experiments. Wertheimer's report of this work was a seminal paper in the evolution of Gestalt theory: 'Experimentelle Studien über Sehen von Bewegung',
Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 61 (1912).
Wertheimer later transferred to Berlin and subsequently emigrated to the United States, where he later reported original experimental work on learning, described in a book entitled
Productive Thinking (1945; enlarged edn. 1959).
(Published 1987)— O. L. Zangwill
