WUNDT, WILHELM (1832–1920), German physiologist, philosopher, and psychologist, was best known as the founder of experimental psychology. Born the son of a Lutheran pastor, near Mannheim, Wundt studied at Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin, took his Ph.D. and M.D. degrees at Heidelberg, and taught at the universities of Heidelberg, Zurich, and Leipzig. Early in his teaching career at Heidelberg he wrote Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung (1858–1862), considered to be the first treatment of psychology as an experimental science, and Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Tierseele (1863). Perhaps his most important work for psychology was Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (1874), in which he advocated investigating the immediate experiences of consciousness using a method of introspection. In 1874 he was made professor of inductive philosophy at Zurich. In the following year, he accepted a professorship at Leipzig, where in 1879 he founded what is generally regarded as the world's...