23 Facts About Hans Wallach

Hans Wallach was a German-American experimental psychologist whose research focused on perception and learning.

Hans Wallach was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Howard Crosby Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

Hans Wallach was born in Berlin on November 28,1904, to a Jewish family.

Hans Wallach completed the work for a PhD degree in 1934, hurrying because his vulnerable position as a Jew in Nazi Germany had led him to decide on emigration.

Hans Wallach worked at Swarthmore for the rest of his career.

Hans Wallach rose through academic ranks, becoming a full professor in 1953, and chair of the psychology department from 1957 to 1966.

Hans Wallach retired from teaching in 1975, but remained active in research until 1994.

Hans Wallach was married to artist Phoebe Kasper, and they had a son Karl.

Hans Wallach was not a theorist, and he did not organize his research around an overarching theoretical system.

Hans Wallach found that the motion the observer perceives is determined by the shape of the aperture.

Hans Wallach explained this finding by asserting that the perceptual system tends to preserve the individual identity of the line segments defined by the end points created by the aperture, and that this mode of movement best preserves that identity.

In 1976, Hans Wallach published an English summary of his dissertation experiments,.

Hans Wallach's results provide evidence against a modular scheme of visual processing, where form, color, and motion are computed in isolation.

However, Hans Wallach came to doubt this explanation and in subsequent years dissociated himself from this research.

In general Hans Wallach avoided neurophysiological explanations for perceptual phenomena, and the paper on figural after-effects was not included in a collection of his articles that Hans Wallach published in 1976.

Hans Wallach's research showed that when the human head moves, it creates a dynamic pattern of binaural cues that can, when paired with information about the direction and extent of the head movement, enable a listener to determine the elevation of a sound source.

Furthermore, Hans Wallach's highly simplified experimental setup does not deal with three-dimensional spatial arrangements nor with complex visual fields that include many interacting luminances.

Hans Wallach called this process constancy of visual direction, and he noted with interest that it could be easily modified through perceptual adaptation.

Hans Wallach came to regard adaptation as an analytical tool in itself.

Hans Wallach was a beloved figure on the Swarthmore campus, not least for his colorful personal manner.

Hans Wallach firmly established his reputation for brilliant scholarship and an inspirational, decidedly eccentric style.

Hans Wallach chain smoked during his seminars, often getting so immersed in thought that he would hold his Camels as they burned to the ends.

Hans Wallach laid out the perceptual problem, and we all did our best to work out a solution.