Jean
Piaget was born on the the ninth of August 1896, in
Neuchatel, Switzerland. He was a very talented scholar, and
had his first scientific paper, on the Albino Sparrow
published at the age of ten. By his twenty-first birthday,
he had published 20 scientific papers on molluscs.
He studied at the University of Neuchatel, from where he graduated in 1916 at the age of twenty, and received his doctorate of Biology at the age of 22.
In 1919 he became interested in psychology, and studied and carried out research in Zurich, Switzerland, and later in Sorbonne, Paris. He was first inerested in Freudian theories, however it was whilst he was studying in Sorbonne that he began his studies on cognitive development.
At
the age of 25 in 1921, Piaget took the job of Director of
and Institute for research on children in Geneva,
Switzerland.
In 1923, Piaget married Valentine Chatenay, and their first daughter, Jacqueline was born in 1925. His second daughter Lucienne was born in 1927, and in 1931, a son, Laurent was born into the family. Piaget used each of his children to investigate the development of thought processes.
Piaget
spent fifty years studying children. Between 1929, and 1967,
he was the Director of the International Bureau for
Education. He also held the position of director of the
Institute for Educational Sciences at the University of
Geneva between 1933 and 1971, was the Professor of
Psychology and Sociology at the University of Lausanne
between 1938 and 1951, and the Professor of Sociology at the
University of Geneva between 1939 and 1952. From 1940 to
1971, Piaget was also the Professor of Experimental
Psychology at the University of Geneva, and from 1952 to
1963 he was the Professor of Development Psychology at
Sorbonne.
Piaget died at the age of eighty-four, on the seventeenth of September, 1980 in Geneva, Switzerland.
|
|
