Gerardus Heymans

Gerardus Heymans (1857 to 1930) was a Dutch philosopher and psychologist, professor of philosophy at the University of Groningen from 1890 to 1927 and its rector magnificus in 1908 to 1909. He is regarded as the pioneer of Dutch psychology: the laboratory he set up in 1892, first in a room of his own house, marked the start of experimental psychology in the Netherlands. He studied psychological inhibition and classic visual illusions, and he was the first psychologist to base a typology of personality types on empirical research, known as Heymans' Cube, with eight types on three dimensions; Eysenck called him one of the founders of personality psychology. In philosophy he defended psychic monism, and in 1919 he became the first chairman of the Dutch study association for psychical research.