Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a Swiss psychologist and pioneering developmental theorist. Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, he earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of Neuchâtel in 1918 before studying psychology in Zürich and Paris. He served as director of studies at the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva and held professorships at the universities of Neuchâtel and Geneva. His research described children’s intellectual development through four stages and helped establish developmental psychology as a major field.

Piaget published more than 50 books and 500 papers, including The Language and Thought of the Child, Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, and Six Psychological Studies, originally published in French as Six Études de psychologie.