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Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was born in Chrlice u Brna, Moravia. After he suffered from a cardiac arrest in 1989, he went to live with his son until the day he died the day after his birthday in 1916.
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Mach was educated at home by his parents. In 1855 he became a student at the University of Vienna Where he studied physics and for one semester medical physiology, receiving his doctorate in physics in 1860. When he published his thesis titled Über elektrische Ladungen und Induktion, and his habilitation the following year.
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In 1864, he took a job as professor of mathematics at the University of Graz., and in 1866 he was appointed a professor of physics. During that period, Mach worked in psychophysics and in sensory perception. In 1867, he took the chair of experimental physics at the Charles-Ferdinand University, where he stayed for 28 years before returning to Vienna.
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During the 1890s Mach made many contributions to psychology and physiology, including his anticipation of the gestalt phenomena, his discovery of the oblique effect and of Mach bands, an inhibition-influenced type of visual illusion, and especially his discovery of a function of the inner ear that helps control human balance.
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His philosophy, developed in close interplay with his science. Mach defended recognizing only sensations as real. This seemed incompatible with the view of atoms and molecules. He declared, after an 1897 lecture: "I don't believe that atoms exist!"
Mach, Ernst. “The Analysis Of Sensations.” The Analysis of Sensations, Ernst Mach, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/mach.htm#:~:text=Source%3A%20The%20Analysis%20of%20Sensations%20(1897).