Who established psychology as a science?

Wilhelm Wundt (16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German psychologist who established the very first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879. This event is widely recognized as the formal establishment of psychology as a science distinct from biology and philosophy. Prior to Wundt's work, psychology was a discipline that was typically incorporated into medicine or the life sciences.

He was born at Neckarau, Baden (now part of Mannheim), studied from 1851 to 1856 at the University of Tübingen, at the University of Heidelberg, and at the University of Berlin. Wundt graduated as a doctor of medicine and wrote "Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception" (1858–1862). However, his main interest was in human psychology and related subjects. In 1874 he wrote a book that came to be one of the most important in the history of psychology, "Principles of Physiological Psychology". This was the first textbook that was written pertaining to the field of experimental psychology.

Wundt argued that a primary goal of psychology should be to understand and analyze consciousness. He was also interested in linguistics. Also, he identified an optical illusion now known as the "Wundt Illusion". In the illusion, two straight lines positioned in front of a series of angled lines appear to bend.