Unknown (Mondadori Publishers) · Public domain

Trained as a mathematician under Karl Weierstrass before turning to philosophy, Husserl founded phenomenology, a method for examining consciousness and experience on their own terms rather than through the assumptions of natural science or psychology. He held professorships at Halle, Göttingen and Freiburg, but in 1933 the Nazi race laws barred him from Freiburg's university library over his Jewish family background; he resigned from the German Academy soon after and died, in declining health, five years later.