William Thierry Preyer

William Thierry Preyer (4 July 1841 – 15 July 1897) was an English-born physiologist who worked in Germany.

Preyer was born in Rusholme at Manchester. He studied physiology and chemistry at Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in 1862. In 1866 he earned his medical degree at the University of Bonn, and in 1869 succeeded Johann Nepomuk Czermak (1828-1873) as professor of physiology at the University of Jena. At Jena he was also director of the Physiology Institute.

Preyer was a founder of scientific child psychology, and a pioneer in regards to research of human development based on empirical observation and experimentation. He was inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gustav Fechner’s work in psychophysics.

He authored Die Seele des Kindes (The soul of the child) in 1882. This was a landmark book on developmental psychology written as a rigorous case study of his own daughter’s development, including observational records. It was translated to English in 1888. He was also the author of another landmark book on developmental physiology titled Specielle Physiologie des Embryo (Special physiology of the embryo). Both works laid a foundation in their respective disciplines for future study of modern human development.

At Jena, Preyer introduced experimental-scientific training methods into his lectures, and also created seminars in the field of physiology. Today, the "William Thierry Preyer Award" is issued by the European Society on Developmental Psychology for excellence in research of human development.

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