Marianne Leonore Simmel (3 January 1923 – 24 March 2010) was a German-American psychologist with a special interest incognitive neuropsychology.
The granddaughter of famed sociologist and philosopherGeorg Simmel, she was born into an assimilated Jewish family inJena,Thuringia, Germany, to doctors Hans Eugen Simmel, a professor, and his wife, Else Rose, a pediatrician. She had younger siblings Eva Barbara, Arnold Georg and Gerhard Friedrich.[1] She immigrated to the United States in March 1940 with her family as a stateless refugee and applied for citizenship later that year.[2] The family was initially divided across New York City; the parents stayed at a lodging house while their children lived at various friends' homes. At age 17, with only an eighth-grade education, she initially lived inQueens, working as a housekeeper for another Jewish family.[3] Nine years later, she received her Ph.D. fromHarvard University and later served on the faculty at the College of Medicine at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago and atBrandeis University.[4]
WithFritz Heider, Simmel co-authored "An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior," which explored the experience of animacy.[5] The study showed that subjects presented with a certain display of inanimate two-dimensional figures are inclined to ascribe intentions to those figures.[6] This result has been taken to establish "the human instinct for storytelling" and to serve as important data in the study oftheory of mind.[7]
In addition to her early work with Heider, Simmel went on to make important contributions in cognitiveneuropsychology, for instance in her work on the phenomenon of thephantom limb.[8]
She died inNorth Eastham, Massachusetts.[9]
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