page_title: Bluma Zeigarnik
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Bluma Zeigarnik / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Photographie de Bljuma Zeigarnik enfant
context_page_description: Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik was a Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist, a member of the Berlin School of experimental psychology and Vygotsky Circle. She discovered the Zeigarnik effect and contributed to the establishment of experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline in the Soviet Union in the post-World War II period.
  In the 1920s she conducted a study on memory, in which she compared memory in relation to incomplete and complete tasks. She had found that incomplete tasks are easier to remember than successful ones. This is now known as the Zeigarnik effect. She later began working at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity which is where she would meet her next big influence Vygowski, and become a part of his circle of scientists. It was also there that Zeigarnik founded the Department of Psychology. During that time, Zeigarnik received the Lewin Memorial Award in 1983 for her psychological research.
context_section_description: Zeigarnik was born and raised as Bluma Gerstein into a Lithuanian Jewish family in Prienai, Suwałki Governorate (now in Lithuania) to Wolf and Ronya Gerstein, as their only child. Although her parents spoke some Yiddish, their primary language was Russian, as was hers. From a very young age, Zeigarnik had a high regard for education. This showed in Zeigarnik's interest in wanting to continue her education. Zeigarnik was one of the first Russian women to go to a university. She spent many hours studying in the library. It was there that she met her husband, Albert Zeigarnik, and later married in 1919. In 1922, her husband Albert and she left for Berlin, where he studied at the Polytechnic Institute and she at the University of Berlin. She met Kurt Lewin and assisted him during her time at the university. She graduated in 1925 and received a Doctoral degree from the same university in 1927.
  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 All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (AUIEM, aka VIEM). During World War II, she assisted Alexander Luria in treating head injuries. She was a co-founder of Moscow State University Department of Psychology and the All-Russian Seminars in Psychopathology. She died in Moscow at the age of 87.
caption: Bluma Zeigarnik
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