Never published, an excerpt from Köhler’s series of lectures is available in The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Köhler (1971). The full manuscript of the two series of lectures is held by the American Philosophical Society.
Wolfgang Köhler was born on 21 January 1887 in Reval (now Tallinn), Estonia. A German psychologist and phenomenologist, he was a key contributor in the development of Gestalt psychology. Lecturer at the University of Frankfurt in 1911, he was a subject on experiments conducted by Max Wertheimer. As Director of a research station at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1913, he studied problem-solving chimpanzees. In 1921, Köhler became Professor of Philosophy at Berlin, but due to his rejection of Hitler’s government, he moved to the US in 1935 as Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College, retiring in 1955.
Elected to the National Academy of Science in 1947 and President of the American Psychological Association in 1959, he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1956. Co-founder of Psychologische Forschung, his notable works include The Mentality of Apes (1917), Intelligence in Apes (1925), Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology (1929), The Place of Value in a World of Fact (1938), Dynamics in Psychology (1940), Gestalt Psychology Today (1959), and The Task of Gestalt Psychology (1969).
