Egon Brunswik Edler von Korompa (18 March 1903, Budapest7 July 1955, Berkeley, California) was a psychologist who made contributions to functionalism and the history of psychology. Life Early life and education Brunswik was born in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He graduated from the Theresianische Akademie in 1921, after studying mathematics, science, classics, and history. He enrolled as a student of psychology at the University of Vienna, where he became an assistant in Karl Bühler's Psychological Institute (student colleagues included Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Konrad Lorenz) and received a PhD in 1927. While a graduate student in psychology, he also passed the state examination for Gymnasium teachers in mathematics and physics. Early career Brunswik established the first psychological laboratory in Turkey while he was visiting lecturer in Ankara during 1931–1932. He became Privatdozent at the University of Vienna in 1934. In 1933, however, Edward C. Tolman, chairman of the department of psychology at the University of California, spent a year in Vienna. He and Brunswik found that although they had been working in different areas of psychological research, their theories of behavior were complementary. Berkeley Brunswik met Edward C. Tolman in Vienna during 1933, and in 1935–1936 received a Rockefeller fellowship that enabled him to visit the University of California. He remained at Berkeley where he became an assistant professor of psychology in 1937 and a full professor in 1947. Later life On June 6, 1938, in New York City Brunswik married Else Frenkel-Brunswik (also a former assistant in Buhler's institute), who became well known as a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist and investigator of the authoritarian personality. Also in 1938 he participated in the International Committee composed to organise the International Congresses for the Unity of Science. Brunswik became an American citizen in 1943. After a long and painful bout of severe hypertension, Egon committed suicide in 1955. Professional contributions Probabilistic Functionalism Brunswik's work in Vienna had culminated in the publication of Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt in 1934. All of his subsequent work was devoted to the extension and elaboration of the fundamental position set forth in this book, namely, that psychology should give as much attention to the properties of the organism's environment as it does to the organism itself. He asserted that the environment with which the organism comes into contact is an uncertain, probabilistic one, however lawful it may be in terms of physical principles. Adaptation