Mario Ponzo

He went on to study medicine under Federico Kiesow at the University of Turin and received his degree in 1906. He worked under Kiesow for twenty five years until he was asked to join the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Rome. There, he became the chair of psychology and remained in the position until his retirement in 1952 and in 1958 he was named Professor Emeritus.[1]

Ponzo contributed to several Italian and non-Italian psychology journals including Psychological Abstracts and Psychological Reports.[1] In 1911, he published an article in the journal Archives Italiennes de Biologie which presented the well-known optical illusion known as the Ponzo illusion.[2] In the same year he wrote for the Atti della Regia Accademia delle Scienze di Torino what has been described as the first article in Italian on psychology and the cinema. In 1931 he succeeded Sante De Sanctis to the chair in psychology at the University of Rome.[3] At the time of his death, he had published 280 times.[1] Ponzo also served as a foreign associate for the American Psychology Association and served as a member of the Hungarian and German Societies of Psychology, and of the International Association of Applied Psychology.[1]

Ponzo was interested in variety of fields within the larger realm of psychology including sensory and perceptual processes,[4] imaginative and representative processes,[5] personality, psychomotor processes, and applied psychology.[1]