The American social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) carried out researches that are fundamental to the study of the dynamics and the manipulation of human behavior. He is the originator of field theory.

Kurt Lewin was born in Mogilno, Prussia, on Sept. 9, 1899. He studied at the universities of Freiburg and Munich and completed his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1914. He taught in Berlin from 1921 until the advent of Hitler to power in 1933, when he emigrated to the United States. He was visiting professor at Stanford and at Cornell before receiving an appointment as professor of child psychology in the Child Welfare Research Station of the State University of Iowa in 1935. In 1945 he left lowa to start the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also served as visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard.

At lowa, Lewin and...