Juan Huarte de San Juan

Juan Huarte de San Juan or Juan Huarte y Navarro (c. 1530-1592) was a Spanish physician and psychologist. He was born at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port around 1530, and was educated at the university of Huesca, where he graduated in medicine.Hugh Chisholm. Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition. [http://books.google.com/books?id=KGcEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA845&dq HUARTE DE SAN JUAN] . Cambridge England: at the University press. Published 1910.]

Though it appears doubtful whether he practiced as a physician at Huesca, Huarte distinguished himself by his professional skill and heroic zeal during the plague which devastated Baeza in 1566.

Huarte published the first edition of his "Examen de ingenios para las ciencias" in 1575, which won him a European reputation, and was translated by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Though now superseded, Huarte's treatise is historically interesting as the first attempt to show the connection between psychology and physiology, and its acute ingenuity is as remarkable as the boldness of its views. In 1594, after his death, a second, revised and expurgated (by the Inquisition) version was published.Julián Velarde Lombraña. [http://www.psicothema.com/psicothema.asp?id=895 HUARTE DE SAN JUAN , PATRONO DE PSICOLOGÍA] . Psicothema. 1993. Vol. 5, nº 2, pp. 451-458.] During the 16th, 17th and 18th century, the "Examen" was translated into six European languages: French, Italian, English, Latin, German and Dutch.Javier Virués Ortega. [http://www.psicothema.com/psicothema.asp?id=3125 JUAN HUARTE DE SAN JUAN IN CARTESIAN AND MODERN PSYCHOLINGUISTICS: AN ENCOUNTER WITH NOAM CHOMSKY] . Psicothema. 2005. Vol. 17, nº 3, pp. 436-440.]

Today Huarte de San Juan is considered the patron of Spanish psychology.

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