Piaget, Jean (1896–1980)

Abstract

Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean William Fritz Piaget pioneered the field of cognitive developmental psychology using empirical methods to study children. Like Walter Benjamin, Piaget was one of the few modern thinkers to take children seriously, and his enduring impact is attested by the fact that he is the second most cited psychologist in the twentieth century after Sigmund Freud. A precocious student, who had published his first scientific article at the age of ten, Piaget received his doctorate in zoology at the age of twenty-two.