Psychology Important People

Wilhelm Wundt

1832-1920; Field: structuralism, voluntarism; Contributions: introspection, basic units of experience; Studies: 1st psychological laboratory in world at University of Leipzig

William James

1842-1910; Field: functionalism; Contributions: studied how humans use perception to function in our environment; Studies: Pragmatism, The Meaning of Truth

Sigmund Freud

1856-1939; Field: psychoanalytic, personality; Contributions: id/ego/superego, reality and pleasure principles, ego ideal, defense mechanisms (expanded by Anna Freud), psychoanalysis, transference

Carl Jung

1875-1961; Field: neo-Freudian, analytic psychology; Contributions: people had conscious and unconscious awareness; archetypes; collective unconscious; libido is all types of energy, not just sexual; Studies: dream studies/interpretation

Abraham Maslow

1908-1970; Field: humanism; Contributions: hierarchy of needs-needs at a lower level dominate an individual's motivation as long as they are unsatisfied, self-actualization, transcendence

Abraham Marslow

Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization. Maslow was a psychology professor at Alliant International University, Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a "bag of symptoms." A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Maslow as the tenth most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Alfred Adler

Alfred W. Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of inferiority—the inferiority complex—is recognized as an isolating element which plays a key role in personality development. Alfred Adler considered human beings as an individual whole, therefore he called his psychology "Individual Psychology".

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics," Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Skinner

Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner (March 20, 1904 - August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher.

Carl Rogers

Carl Ransom Rogers was an influential American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach to psychology. Rogers is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his pioneering research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association in 1956.

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Broadbent

Donald Eric Broadbent FRS was an influential experimental psychologist from the U.K. His career and research bridged the gap between the pre-WWII approach of Sir Frederic Bartlett and what became known as Cognitive Psychology in the late 1960s. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Broadbent as the 54th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Francis Sumner

Francis Cecil Sumner was a pivotal leader in education reform. He is primarily known for being the first African American to receive a Ph.D in psychology. Francis Sumner was the first African-American to receive an earned doctorate in any American university. He worked closely with G. Stanley Hall during his time at Clark University, and his dissertation—published in Pedagogical Seminary, which later became the Journal of Genetic Psychology—focused on "Psychoanalysis of Freud and Adler."

Stanley Hall

Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hall as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Lewis Terman.

Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science. In physiology and psychology, he is known for his mathematics of the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, color vision research, and on the sensation of tone, perception of sound, and empiricism. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy, work in electrodynamics, chemical thermodynamics, and on a mechanical foundation of thermodynamics. As a philosopher, he is known for his philosophy of science, ideas on the relation between the laws of perception and the laws of nature, the science of aesthetics, and ideas on the civilizing power of science. The largest German association of research institutions, the Helmholtz Association, is named after him.

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning. From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual brilliance along with an unusual energy which he named "the instinct for research". Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s, and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life to science. In 1870 he enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty at the University of Saint Petersburg to take the course in natural science. Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904, becoming the first Russian Nobel laureate. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Pavlov as the 24th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Pavlov's principles of classical conditioning have been found to operate across a variety of experimental and clinical settings, including educational classrooms

Jean Martin

Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology", and his name has been associated with at least 15 medical eponyms, including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and Charcot disease. Charcot has been referred to as "the father of French neurology and one of the world's pioneers of neurology". His work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology; modern psychiatry owes much to the work of Charcot and his direct followers. He was the "foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France" and has been called "the Napoleon of the neuroses".

John B Watson

John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 - September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism.

Karl Lashley

Karl Spencer Lashley was a psychologist and behaviorist remembered for his contributions to the study of learning and memory. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lashley as the 61st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark were African-American psychologists who as a married team conducted important research among children and were active in the Civil Rights Movement. They founded the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem and the organization Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited. Kenneth Clark also was an educator and professor at City College of New York, and first black president of the American Psychological Association

Kurt Lewin

Kurt Zadek Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. Kurt Lewin, exiled from the land of his birth, made a new life for himself. In this new life, Lewin defined himself and his contributions within three lenses of analysis; applied research, action research, and group communication were his major offerings to the field of communication.

Margaret Washburn

Margaret Floy Washburn, leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to be granted a PhD in psychology, and the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as an APA President. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Washburn as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Robert S. Woodworth.

Mary Calkins

Mary Whiton Calkins was an American philosopher and psychologist. Calkins was also the first woman to become president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association.

Max Weertheirmer

Max Wertheimer was an Austro-Hungarian-born psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. He is known for his book, Productive Thinking, and for conceiving the phi phenomenon as part of his work in Gestalt psychology.

Pierre Janet

Pierre Marie Félix Janet was a pioneering French psychologist, philosopher and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic memory. He is ranked alongside William James and Wilhelm Wundt as one of the founding fathers of psychology

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy.