HUSSERL, EDMUND (1859–1938), German philosopher, founder and central figure in the twentieth-century philosophical movement or approach known as phenomenology. Born in Prossnitz (Prostejov), Moravia, Husserl studied at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin and received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1882. After becoming an assistant to the mathematician Karl Weierstrass in Berlin, he moved to Vienna where, largely under the influence of the philosopher Franz Brentano, he changed his field from mathematics to philosophy.

Husserl's three teaching positions roughly correlate with three periods in the development of his phenomenological philosophy. His stay at the University of Halle (1887–1901) coincided with a prephenomenological period, during which he attempted to provide a psychological basis for mathematics and logic; it culminated in the influential Logical Investigations (2 vols., 1900–1901), which laid the foundation for his descriptive phenomenology. During his tenure at the University of Göttingen (1901–1916), Husserl established his role...