ABSTRACT
Paul Harkai Schiller (1908-1949) was a psychologist of remarkable creativity and vigor. Many psychologists know some of his work but do not associate it with Schiller himself, with his theoretical approach, or with his major research corpus. In brief, Paul Schiller was a Hungarian-born psychologist who emigrated to the United States in 1947. In Hungary, he conducted research on a great range of topics. In the United States, he is best known for his research on innate motor patterns in chimpanzees. Schiller believed that all complex, learned behavior was shaped from a set of innate motor elements. It was from this perspective that his work with chimpanzees, performing tasks made famous by Wolfgang Kohler, was done. His other best-known studies dealt with drawings done by chimpanzees and the learning of detour problems by a variety of species.
