Gerardus Heymans (1857–1930) was an internationally renowned philosopher and psychologist who established psychology as an academic discipline in the Netherlands and founded its first psychological laboratory. His work was published primarily in German and occasionally in Dutch, covering a broad range of topics and employing an empirical–analytical approach, with conscious experience serving as the basis for his theories. Heymans applied this approach to issues of ethics, metaphysics, logic, and aesthetics, as well as to his experiments on the senses, differential psychology, and his investigations of visual illusions and telepathy. Especially his differential psychology made an impact in Dutch society and on academic circles in France, England, and South Africa. However, while Heymans marks the beginnings of a growing interest in psychology in the Netherlands, this interest would not follow the lines that Heymans had set out in his career.