Max Wertheimer was a German psychologist and one of the founders of the Gestalt psychology movement. Born in 1880, he focused on how people perceive and organize visual information, emphasizing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. His work laid the foundation for understanding perception and cognitive processes. Wertheimer's most notable contributions include the principles of Gestalt perception, such as figure-ground organization and the laws of grouping. He believed that our minds naturally seek patterns and structure in the chaos of sensory input, influencing fields like cognitive psychology and visual arts.