| von Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand |
1821-1894 |
Helmholtz fundamentally altered the way physiologists and psychologists think about the nervous system when he published the first accurate estimate of the speed of a nerve impulse. |
| Galton, Francis |
1822-1911 |
Galton pinoeered the study of differences between individuals and developed a theory that explained individual differences with reference to their genetic origins. |
| Wundt, Wilhelm Maximilian |
1832-1920 |
Wundt, who is generally credited with founding the discipline of psychology as a separate science, established the first experimental psychology. |
| James, William |
1842-1910 |
Regarded as the 'father' of American psychology, James was a provocative and lucid writer who was particularly influential in shaping psychologists' thinking on the nature of consciousness and on emotion. |
| Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich |
1849-1936 |
Pavlov detailed a theory of leraning called classical or Pavlovian conditioning, based on the analysis of the relationship between a stimulus and a behavioural response. |
| Freud, Sigmund |
1856-1939 |
The founder of psychoanalysis, Freud emphasised in his approach the importance of unconscious factors in guiding human behaviour and the value of interpreting dreams as an indirect route to the unconscious. |
| Binet, Alfred |
1857-1911 |
Binet invented the intelligence test and used it to quantify children's intelligence. |
| Spearman, Charles Edward |
1863-1945 |
Spearman developed a theory of intelligence that distinguishes between a general factor, 'g', and specific factors, and devised novel statistical techniques to test his theory. |
| Titchener, Edward Bradford |
1867-1927 |
The founder of a school of thought referred to as structuralism, Titchener emphasised the importance of understanding the structure of experienc eby using analytic introspection to reveal the building blocks of mental life. |
| Cannon, Walter Bradford |
1871-1945 |
Cannon formulated a theory of emotions that was central to one of the great debates of twentieth-century psychology. |
| Thorndike, Edward Lee |
1874-1949 |
Thorndike laid the foundation for modern learning theory by formulating a theoretical position that led to the specification of laws of learning that could be empirically tested. |
| Jung, Carl Gustav |
1875-1961 |
Once regarded as Freud's heir-appraent, Jung disagreed with Freud on the primacy of the sex drive and devised an alternative position that embraced the philosophical and spiritual needs of the person. |
| Watson, John Broadus |
1878-1958 |
Watson founded a school of thought called behaviourism which focuses on the prediction and control of behaviour. |
| Wertheimer, Maximilian |
1880-1943 |
Wertheimer's studies of appraent motion made him one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, a school of thought that claims the mind has innate organisational abilities that influence how the world is perceived. |
| Hull, Clark |
1884-1952 |
Hull developed a comprehensive theory of learning based on explicit postulates that could be rigorously tested in a systematic manner. |
| Bartlett, Frederick Charles |
1886-1969 |
A theorist of human cognition, Bartlett popularised the concept of schema as a basic unit of thought. |
| Lewin, Kurt |
1890-1947 |
Lewin was an experimental social psychologist who formulated a field theory to account for the events within a person's life space -- all of the influences acting on them at a given time. |
| Vygotsky (Vygotskii), Lev (Leon) Semeonovich |
1896-1934 |
Vygotsky formulated a theory of cognitive development based on the linkages between social--historical factors, as reflected in educational systems, and those of a more immanent, interpersonal nature, such as parent--child interactions. |
| Piaget, Jean Claude |
1896-1980 |
Piaget pioneered the study of the development of thinking and problem-solving in children, based on innovative methods of enquiry that focus on the analysis of errors for what they reveal about the child's conception of the world. |
| Allport, Gordon Willard |
1897-1967 |
Allport pioneered an approach to the study of personality that emphasises the influence of social processes on personality development and stress the importance of free will and personal responsiblity. |
| Luria, Alexander Romanovich |
1902-1977 |
Luria devised and refined clinical tests for brain damage, and developed innovactive methods for restoring brain function. |
| Rogers, Carl Ransom |
1902-1987 |
A humanistic psychologist, Rogers developed a non-directive or person-centred method of therapy. |
| Erikson, Erik Homburger |
1902-1994 |
Erikson extended and modified Freud's idea regarding the structure of human development across the lifespan and laid particular emphasis on the importance of interpersonal relationships and the creative qualities of the person. |
| Lorenz, Konrad Zacharia |
1903-1989 |
One of the founders of ethology, Lorenz was awarded a Nobel prize for his work on the study of animals in their natural habitats. |
| Gibson, James Jerome |
1904-1979 |
Gibson's 'ecological psychology' sought to understand the relationships between the way a person perceives the world and how they behave. |
| Hebb, Donald Olding |
1904-1985 |
Hebb encouraged psychologists to think anew about how the brain functions, and reawakened an interest in the neurological basis of behaviour. |
| Skinner, Burrhus Frederick |
1904-1990 |
A staunch proponent of behaviourism, Skinner developed a theory of learning known as operant conditioning, based on the relationship between behaviour and reward or reinforcement. |
| Cattell, Raymond Bernard |
1905-1998 |
Cattell applied advanced statistical techniques to make fundamental contributions to the measurement and understanding of the structure of personality and ability. |
| Bowlby, Edward John Mostyn |
1907-1990 |
A child psychiatrist, Bowlby's name is synonymous with attachment theory. |
| Asch, Solomon |
1907-1996 |
Asch conducted experimental studies of persuasion, social pressure and conformity within the tradition of Gestalt psychology. |
| Maslow, Abraham H. |
1908-1970 |
Maslow played a major role in pressing the case for humanistic psychology, and developed a theory of motivation based on the idea that needs are organised hierarchically. |
| Anastasi, Anne |
1908-2001 |
Anne Anastasi influenced several generations of psychologists through her immensely popular textbooks on the construction and use of psychological tests. |
| Sperry, Roger Wolcott |
1913-1994 |
A Nobel Prizewinner, Sperry devised ingenious experiments to examine the organisation of the brain and the effects of breaking the connections between the left and right hemispheres. |
| Bruner, Jerome Seymour |
1915- |
Bruner developed and applied a theory of cognition that focuses on the role of cultural, environmental and experimential factors in shaping the way people perceive and think about themselves in the context of the world in which they live. |
| Eysenck, Hans Jurgen |
1916-1997 |
Eysenck's emphasis on the biological basis of behaviour led to the development of biological measures of intelligence and personality, while his trenchant criticism of psychoanalysis led to the marginalisation of its influence within mainstream psychology. |
| Simon, Herbert Alexander |
1916-2001 |
A Nobel Prizewinner in economics, Simon blended economics with psychology in experimental studies and computer stimulations of problem-solving and decision-making. |
| McClelland, David Clarence |
1917-1998 |
McClelland is best known for his work on achievement motivation or the 'need for achievement' and his studies of people with a particularly intense need to achieve. |
| Maccoby, Eleanor Emmons |
1917- |
Maccoby made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the role of the parent-child relationship for social development and the origins of gender differences. |
| Gregory, Richard L. |
1923- |
Gregory's work reflects a lifelong interest in studying illusions for what they can reveal about how the brain makes sense of the information it receives about the world. |
| Bandura, Albert |
1925- |
Bandura pioneered the development of a theory of social learning that has been particularly influential in understanding aggression and how a wide range of human behaviour is motivated and regulated by self-evaluations. |
| Luce, Robert Duncan |
1925- |
The name 'Luce' is inextricably linked with the development of mathematical psychology. |
| Broadbent, Donald Eric |
1926-1993 |
Broadbent used experimental methods to understand and enhance human behaviour in a wide range of settings, particularly through his work on selective attention. |
| Kohlberg, Lawrence |
1927-1987 |
Kohlberg devised a theory of moral thinking which suggests that the development of moral reasoning follows an invariant sequence of stages. |
| Tulving, Endel |
1927- |
Tulving developed a theory of memory that introduced the concept of episodic memory, a type of long-term memory for personal experiences and events. |
| Chomsky, Avram Noel |
1928- |
The most significant figure in the science of linguistics, Chomsky's ideas on the way language is structured fundamentally affected the way psychologists thought about how language is acquired and used. |
| Neisser, Ulric Richard Gustav |
1928- |
Neisser defined cognitive psychology as referring to all of the processes by which sensory information is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered and used, and wrote a textbook on the topic providing a model structure that has been reproduced by numerous authors. |
| Milgram, Stanley |
1933-1984 |
Milgram conducted a classic and controversial experimental study of obedience that suggests that most people are capable of heinous behaviour. |
| Zimbardo, Philip George |
1933- |
Zimbardo designed the Stanford Prison Experiment, a study of iconic status that warned of the consequences of deindividuation and the need to mitigate its pernicious effects. |
| Baddeley, Alan D. |
1934- |
Baddeley developed a sophisticated theory of memory that has been fruitfully applied in a wide range of settings. |
| Anderson, John Robert |
1947- |
Anderson developed a computer-based system capable of simulating a wide variety of intelligent behaviour and used it to build a tutoring system for mathematics and computer programming. |
