Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser
Neisser was born in the Silesian town of Schweidnitz (now Świdnica, in Poland), the son of a well-known Jewish physician, Dr. Moritz Neisser. After he completed the elementary school in Münsterberg, Neisser enrolled in the St. Maria Magdalena School in Breslau (now Wrocław, in Poland). In this school, he was a contemporary of another great name in the history of medicine, Paul Ehrlich. He obtained the Abitur in 1872.
Ulric Neisser
Neisser went on to obtain his doctorate from Harvard's Department of Social Relations in 1956. According to Fancher and Rutherford, he completed his dissertation in Psychophysics. He spent a year afterwards as an instructor at Harvard. He went on to teach at Brandeis and Emory Universities, before establishing himself at Cornell. While at Brandeis University, located in Waltham, Neisser expanded his psychological horizon according to Fancher and Rutherford. Fancher and Rutherford also wrote that Neisser's department chair was Abraham Maslow. According to Cutting, Neisser felt a "deep sympathy for the idealistic humanism" of Abraham Maslow. Maslow had also been profoundly interested by Gestalt psychology.