Kurt Koffka was born March 18, 1886, in Berlin. He received his PhD from the University of Berlin in 1909, and, just like Köhler, became an assistant at Frankfurt.

In 1911, he moved to the University of Giessen, where he taught till 1927. While there, he wrote Growth of the Mind: An Introduction to Child Psychology (1921). In 1922, he wrote an article for Psychological Bulletin which introduced the Gestalt program to readers in the U.S.

In 1927, he left for the U.S. to teach at Smith College. He published Principles of Gestalt Psychology in 1935. He died in 1941.