Kurt Koffka
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| Kurt Koffka | |
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| Born | March 18, 1886 Berlin |
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| Died | November 22, 1941 Northampton |
Kurt Koffka (Berlin, March 18, 1886 - Northampton, November 22, 1941) was born and educated in Berlin and earned his PhD there in 1909 as a student of Carl Stumpf. In addition to his studies in Berlin, Koffka also spent one year at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he developed his strong fluency in English, a skill that later served him well in his efforts to spread Gestalt psychology beyond German borders. Koffka was already working at the University of Frankfurt when Max Wertheimer arrived in 1910 and invited Koffka to participate as a subject in his research on the phi phenonemon.
Koffka left Frankfurt in 1911 to take a position at the University of Giessen, forty miles from Frankfurt, where he remained until 1924. Putting his English fluency to the test, Koffka then traveled to the United States, where he was a visiting professor at the Cornell University from 1924 to 1925, and two years later at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Eventually, he accepted a position at the Smith College in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he remained until his death in 1941.
[edit] External links
- Gestalt psychology website of the international Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications - GTA
- Website on Gestalt psychology with biographies of Wertheimer et al.
