Kurt Lewin was born in a small town of Mogilno, now in Poland, 1890, and died in the United States, 1947. He is considered one of the truly great figures in the history of psychology and belongs to the most influential scholars in social sciences of the 20th century. His field theory and related concepts, research methods and applied works became fundamental for modern psychology both in general and social psychology, particularly in the latter.

It is amazing how many of his students and coworkers became distinguished scholars, who developed such important theories for the psychology of the second half of the 20th century as the theory of balance (Homans, Thibaut, Kelley), cognitive dissonance (Festinger), attribution (Heider), social communication (Bavelas), group cooperation (Cartwright), group decisions (Guetzkow), reactance (Brehm), styles of leadership (Lippitt, White), the bases of power (French, Raven), and many others. His students and colleagues were not only authors of a quite new theoretical constructs, the consequences of which were significant in social theory and practice, but they were also initiators of quite new research approaches, e.g. in the frame of environmental (Barker) or ecological psychology (Bronfenbrenner).