Sergei Rubinshtein

Born June 6 (18), 1889, in Odessa; died Jan. 11, 1960, in Moscow. Soviet psychologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR; 1943).

Rubinshtein was chairman of the psychology subdepartments at the A. I. Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute from 1930 to 1942 and at Moscow State University from 1942 to 1950. From 1942 to 1945 he served as director of the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR. He was deputy director of the Institute of Philosophy of the AN SSSR from 1945 to 1948 and chief of the psychology section of the Institute of Philosophy of the AN SSSR from 1945 to 1949 and from 1956 to 1960.

Rubinshtein did work in philosophical and methodological problems of psychology, the critical analysis of the main trends in foreign psychology, and the study of perception, memory, speech, and thought. He examined determinism in psychology in the light of dialectical materialism and studied man from the standpoint of ontology, gnoseology, and ethics.

Rubinshtein was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1942 for his Principles of General Psychology (1940). He also received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and several medals.