Kurt Koffka

Kurt Koffka
Birthday	Thursday, March 18, 1886
Birthplace	Berlin, German Empire
Died	Saturday, November 22, 1941

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Koffka, Kurt

 

Born Mar. 18, 1886, in Berlin; died Nov. 22, 1941, in Northampton, Mass. German-American psychologist; one of the founders of gestalt psychology.

Koffka was a student of C. Stumpf. He became an assistant professor in 1911 and a professor in 1918 (to 1924) at the University of Giessen. In 1927 he became a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. Together with M. Wertheimer and W. Köhler, Koffka published the journal Psychologische Forschungy, the principal organ of gestalt psychology. Lecturing in the USA and Great Britain during the early 1920’s, he played an important role in the worldwide popularization of gestalt psychology. His most important work, Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935), is a fundamental summary of the achievements of the gestalt school. Koffka was the first of the gestalt psychologists to address himself to problems of the psychological development of the child (1921).

WORKS

Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 3rd ed. New York, 1950.
In Russian translation: “Samonabliudenie i metod psikhologii.” In the anthology Problemy sovremennoi psikhologii. Moscow, 1926.
Osnovy psikhicheskogo razvitiia. Moscow-Leningrad, 1934.

A. A. PUZYREI

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.