Franz Samelson (September 23, 1923 – March 16, 2015) was a German-American social psychologist and historian of psychology. Samelson was born on September 23, 1923 in present-day Wroclaw, Poland (then known as Breslau, Germany). Prohibited by the laws of Nazi Germany from attending any German universities, he instead attended a photography school in Munich, where he later worked in a factory with prisoners of war. After World War II ended, he began working for the United States Army. He also enrolled at the University of Munich, where he received a diploma in psychology in 1952.