Viennese medical doctor whose studies of the brain and cranium helped launch modern biological psychology and provided the basis for the pseudoscience of phrenology. Born in Germany and trained in medicine in Vienna, Gall later claimed to have initiated his lifelong study of the structure and function of the brain as a young man when he noticed that persons with good memories commonly possessed bulging eyes. Building upon this insight, and knowledge gained through the study of comparative anatomy, he concluded that mental ability and behavior could be correlated with specific areas of the brain. Gall lectured on his theories in Vienna until civil and religious authorities accused him of promoting materialism and immorality and obliged him to leave the city in 1805. He subsequently embarked upon a tour of other major European cities, where his ideas were generally well received.
Gall eventually settled in Paris, where he set up a successful medical practice and indulged his tastes for gardening, mistresses, and collecting skulls. France also gave him the freedom to teach and publish his ideas. With his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, he produced his major work, Anatomic et physiologic du systeme nerveux en general et du cerveau en particulier, four volumes (1810-19). In it, Gall revolutionized the study of the relationship of the mind to intelligence and behavior by departing from both humoral and mechanical philosophies in favor of a thoroughly biological approach that stressed the structure and organization of the brain and nervous system. Gall’s work had many admirers, including writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), but much of the scientific establishment in France and elsewhere never fully accepted him. His attempts to lecture at the prestigious Institut de France, as well as his candidacy for the Academic de Sciences, met with failure. Undeterred, he continued to write, teach, and collect data in support of his ideas until his death in Paris in 1828.
Gall’s basic theories held that the brain was actually a composite of 27 regions, or “organs,” which localized all mental functions. He organized these organs into two general groups: (1) those common to animals and human beings, including the reproductive instinct, self-defense, guile, and sense perception; and (2) exclusively human faculties, including the religious sentiment, comparative sagacity, wit, and benevolence. Gall considered the organs to be innate and looked to their size and organization to explain such things as intellectual acumen and moral disposition. He would often use examples of extreme behavior and mental illness to illustrate his basic ideas and proposed reforms for the treatment of criminals and the insane.