Wolfgang Köhler worked in psychology at a period when the field was still deciding what counted as an answer.
Wolfgang Köhler was born at Tallinn in 1887. His recorded nationality is Russia. He was educated at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Bonn.
Around the turn of the twentieth century the sciences fractured into specialisms and simultaneously became national assets, funded and directed on a scale no earlier generation had seen.
He held appointments at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Göttingen, where the work centred on psychology.
Psychology has spent its whole history arguing about what counts as data.
Working from Russia shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
His work was formally recognised with the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology, Howard Crosby Warren Medal and Wilhelm Wundt Medal.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Psychology is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
His recorded remarks are gathered further down this page.
Wolfgang Köhler died in 1967 at the age of 80. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Held posts at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Göttingen
- Educated at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and University of Bonn
- Fields of research: psychology
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