Fowler's phrenological head, Staffordshire, England, c. 1879. Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-96) was an American phrenologist who led a revival in phrenology after its decline in the 1850s. In 1860, Fowler emigrated with his family to the United Kingdom and set up the British Phrenological Society, which finally disbanded in 1967. Phrenologists believed that the shape and size of various areas of the brain (and therefore the overlying skull) determined personality. This pseudoscience was developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796; the discipline was very popular in the 19th century, especially from about 1810 until 1840. Although now regarded as an obsolete amalgam of primitive neuroanatomy and moral philosophy, phrenological thinking was influential in 19th-century psychiatry and modern neuroscience.