So who was this Max Wertheimer? He was born in Prague on April 15, 1880. His father was a teacher and the director at a commercial school. Max studied law for more than two years, but decided he preferred philosophy. He left to study in Berlin, where he took classes from Stumpf, then got his doctoral degree (summa cum laude) from Külpe and the University of Würzburg in 1904.

In 1910, he went to the University of Frankfurt’s Psychological Institute. While on vacation that same year, he became interested in the perceptions he experienced on a train. While stopped at the station, he bought a toy stroboscope -- a spinning drum with slots to look through and pictures on the inside, sort of a primitive movie machine or sophisticated flip book.

At Frankfurt, his former teacher Friedrich Schumann, now there as well, gave him the use of a tachistoscope to study the effect. His first subjects were two younger assistants, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka. They would become his lifelong partners.

He published his seminal paper in 1912: "Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement." That year, he was offered a lectureship at the University of Frankfurt. In 1916, he moved to Berlin, and in 1922 was made an assistant professor there. In 1925, he came back to Frankfurt, this time as a professor.

In 1933, he moved to the United States to escape the troubles in Germany. The next year, he began teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City. While there, he wrote his best known book, Productive Thinking, which was published posthumously by his son, Michael Wertheimer, a successful psychologist in his own right. He died October 12, 1943 of a coronary embolism at his home in New York.