Gall, Franz Joseph

Gall, Franz Joseph (1758-1828), a German anatomist, founded the pseudoscience of phrenology. He believed that each of the functions of the mind has its own place in the brain, and that a person’s mental and moral characteristics could be determined by examining the shape of the head.

Gall wrote, with Johann Kaspar Spurzheim, the four-volume Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System (1810-1820). However, modern research has proved phrenology physiologically unsound. Gall was born in Tiefenbrunn near Pforzheim, Germany.