Psychologists

Kurt Zadek Lewin

German-American psychologist and the founder of modern social, organizational, and applied psychology (1890-1947). He extended Gestalt psychology into the social domain and formulated B=f(P,E), behavior as a function of the person and the environment. He fled Nazi persecution to the United States in 1933, became a naturalized citizen in 1940, and founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. He coined the terms action research and group dynamics and is widely credited with the three-step change model of unfreeze-change-refreeze that still underpins organizational change practice today, training Leon Festinger, Morton Deutsch, and an entire generation of applied social psychologists worldwide.

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