Bluma Zeigarnik

Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik (Russian: Блюма Вульфовна Зейгарник) 9 November, 1900 − 24 February, 1988) was a Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist who discovered the Zeigarnik effect and established experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline.

Born into a Jewish family in Prienai, Zeigarnik matriculated from the Berlin University in 1927. She described the Zeigarnik effect in a diploma prepared under the supervision of Kurt Lewin. In the 1930s, she worked with Lev Vygotsky at the Soviet Institute of Experimental Medicine. During World War II, she assisted Alexander Luria in repairing head injuries. She was a co-founder of the Moscow State University Department of Psychology and the All-Russian Seminars in Psychopathology. She died in Moscow at the age of 87.