MÜller, Georg Elias (1850-1934)
During his tenure at the University of Göttingen from 1881 to 1921, the German psychologist Georg Elias Müller helped to spearhead major advances in theory and research into perception, learning, and memory.
Early Life and Career
Georg Elias Müller was born on July 20, 1850, into a clerical family in Grimma, Saxony, Germany. As a schoolboy he showed a precocious interest in natural science, philosophy, poetry, and history. In 1868 he began to study philosophy and history at the University of Leipzig and moved to the University of Berlin in 1869. In Berlin he became acquainted with Rudolph Hermann Lotze's writings, which shifted his focus from history to science as the subject closest to his principal interest, philosophy. After interrupting his studies to fight in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, he moved to Göttingen in 1872 to study with Lotze. The following year he submitted his doctoral dissertation on sensory attention (Müller, 1873) and he completed his postdoctoral dissertation on psychophysics (Müller, 1878) in 1876. Five years later he succeeded Lotze as chair of philosophy in Göttingen, a position he held for forty years, until his mandatory retirement in 1921.
By then Müller's institute had become one of the most important centers for experimental psychology in all of Europe, attracting students from all over the world.
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