William Thierry Preyer or Wilhelm Preyer (4 July 1841 – 15 July 1897) was an English-born biochemist, physiologist and psychologist who worked in Germany. He worked as a professor of physiology at the University of Jena and then at Berlin. Studying his own son among other children he examined developmental psychology, language acquisition and language pathology.

Biography

Preyer was born in Moss Side, Rusholme at Manchester, the son of an industrialist. He went to Clapham Grammar School near London and then studied at Gymnasiums in Duisberg and Bonn. In 1859 he went to study physiology and chemistry at Heidelberg, and received his doctorate in 1862. He studied under Du Bois-Reymond, Helmholz, Claude Bernard and Charles Adolphe Wurtz. In 1866 he earned his medical degree at the University of Bonn, and in 1869 succeeded Johann Nepomuk Czermak (1828-1873) as professor of physiology at the University of Jena. At Jena he was also director of the Physiology Institute. His students included Argentinian Roberto Wernicke. In 1888 he resigned from Jena due to poor health and then lectured for sometime at the University of Berlin. Preyer was a founder of scientific child psychology, and a pioneer in regards to research of human development based on empirical observation and experimentation. He was inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gustav Fechner’s work in psychophysics. He wrote a biography of Darwin and explained language acquisition in terms of evolutionary ideas. He proposed a myophysiological law to complement Fechner's law. Preyer examined telepathy and thought that it involved unconscious muscle reading. He authored Die Seele des Kindes (In English edition as The mind of the child) in 1882. This was a landmark book on developmental psychology written as a rigorous case study of his son Axel's development, including observational records. It was translated to English in 1888. He was also the author of another landmark book on developmental physiology titled Specielle Physiologie des Embryo (Special physiology of the embryo). Both works laid a foundation in their respective disciplines for future study of modern human development. At Jena, Preyer introduced experimental-scientific training methods into his lectures, and also created seminars in the field of physiology. Today, the "William Thierry Preyer Award" is issued by the European Society on Developmental Psychology for excellence in research of human development.

Works