HUSSERL, Edmund (1859-1938), German philosopher, founder of phenomenology. Husserl studied science, philosophy, and mathematics at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin, and Vienna and wrote his doctoral thesis on the calculus of variations. Wrote Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891) and Logical Investigations (1900-1; trans. 1970). During his tenure (1901-16) at the University of Göttingen, Husserl attracted many students, who began to form a distinct phenomenological school, and he wrote his most influential work, Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913; trans. 1931). After 1916 he taught at the University of Freiburg. In Cartesian Meditations (1931; trans. 1960), Husserl attempted to show how the individual consciousness can be directed toward other minds, society, and history. Husserl died in Freiburg on April 26, 1938.Husserl's phenomenology had a great influence on a younger colleague at Freiburg, Martin Heidegger, who developed existential phenomenology, and Jean Paul Sartre and French existentialism.