Weber (Weber) Ernst Heinrich

(24.6.1795, Wittenberg - 26.1.1878, Leipzig) - German anatomist and physiologist, one of the founders of scientific psychology, who made it the idea of measurement.
From 1818, Mr.. he - Professor of Anatomy, 1840, Mr.. professor of physiology at the University of Leipzig studied the inhibitory effect of vagus nerve on the activity of the heart (1845). Foreign Corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1869).
He carried out his research primarily on the physiology of the senses: hearing, sight, skin sensitivity. The effect of temperature adaptation: if you first put one hand in cold water, and the other in hot, then warm water after that will appear for the first hand as warmer than the second.
. Analysis of touch ( 'On the sense of touch') allowed him to identify three types of skin sensations: a feeling of pressure or touch, temperature sensation, feelings of localization
. Developed a scheme of the pilot study of touch, . what type of a compass constructed a special device ( 'sensimeter', . or 'compass Weber'), . by which assesses the distance, . sufficient, . that the two touching the surface of the skin is not merged into one feeling,
. In these studies, Weber determined that this distance is different for different parts of the skin (so-called 'community feeling') and, consequently, the skin has a different sensitivity. In 1834, Mr.. held its world-famous research of relations of sensations and stimuli, . showed, . the new stimulus, . to be perceived as different, . must in fact differ by a certain amount of source, . and that this value represents a constant proportion of the initial stimulus.,
. This was reflected by him in the following formula: DJ / J = K; where J - the original stimulus, DJ - unlike the new stimulus from the source, K - constant depending on the type of receptor
. So, to two clean sound is perceived as different, new sound should be different from the original 1 / 10 size, a new weight - 1 / 30, and for visual stimuli, this ratio - 1 / 100. Based on these studies, G. Fechner was a formula for the basic law of psychophysics: sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus (Weber Fechner law).
. In addition Weber expressed interesting views on the sensory early childhood for Bilateral transfer of motor skills (he had the ability to draw a mirror image simultaneously with both hands)
. Literature.