Edmund Jacobson

Edmund Jacobson (April 22, 1888 – January 7, 1983) was an American physician in internal medicine and psychiatry and a physiologist. He was the creator of Progressive Muscle Relaxation and of Biofeedback.

Biography He was born on April 22, 1888, Chicago to Fannie and Morris Jacobson. His father was a realtor in Chicago, who was born in Strasbourg, and his wife Fannie was born in Iowa.

He received a B.S. degree from Northwestern University in 1908 in just two years. Jacobson received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He took a postgraduate course at Cornell University in 1911. His major work, You Must Relax, addressing the general public, came out in 1934.

Jacobson deepened his investigations from 1936 through 1960 at the Laboratory for Clinical Physiology in Chicago which he directed, and he continued his investigations of simultaneous chemical and electronic recordings in man in health until the 1970s.

He died on January 7, 1983, at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago.