Rudolf Julius Arnheim was born on July 15, 1904 in Berlin. He earned his PhD in 1928 from the University of Berlin where he studied philosophy, psychology, music and art. After graduation, he was an art and film critic for several years. Due to the rise of Nazism, Arnheim moved to Italy in 1933, then England in 1939 where he worked for BBC radio.
In 1940, he moved to the United States and began working as a professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research. In 1943, Arnheim joined the faculty at Sarah Lawrence where he remained for 26 years and conducted the majority of his work. In 1969, Arnheim became Professor of the Psychology of Art at Harvard. Arnheim was a perceptual psychologist, mostly interested in the cognitive basis of art, writing several books on the subject.
Arnheim received two Rockefeller Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943, and a Fulbright Fellowship in 1959. He became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. Rudolf
Arnheim died on June 9, 2007 at the age of 102.
From the guide to the Rudolph Arnheim papers, 1925-1999, (Center for the History of Psychology)
