Kurt Lewin

Kurt Lewin was born in Mogilno, Prussia, and studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg and Munich before switching to psychology at the University of Berlin in 1910. After being wounded while serving in the German army during World War I, he returned to Berlin to finish his doctorate. In 1933, Lewin immigrated to the United States, where he taught at Cornell University and the University of Iowa. He later served as director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT and helped establish the National Training Laboratories. Influenced by Gestalt psychology, Lewin is known as the father of modern social psychology because of his pioneering work utilizing scientific methods and experimentation to look at social behavior.