Max Wertheimer was a founding figures of the Gestalt psychology school of thought.
His father was an educator, and serving as a teacher and the director of a local school.
Wertheimer had an early interest in music, but he also became fascinated with philosophy.
He originally studied law at university, but soon switched to philosophy and psychology.
In 1904, he graduated summa cum laude with a doctorate degree from the University of Wurzburg.
He called this illusion of movement the Phi phenomenon, which is the principle motion pictures are based on.
The three men became lifelong colleagues and would go on to form theschool of thoughtknown as Gestalt psychology.
On October 12, 1943, Wertheimer suffered a fatal coronary embolism at his home in New York.
Gestalt psychology formed partly as a reaction to the atomism of the structuralist school of thought.
According to the Gestalt thinkers, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
From this school of thought emerged the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization.
This set of perceptual principles explains how smaller objects are grouped together to form larger ones.
Summary
Max Wertheimer had an important role in the early development of psychology.
