author
Hermann Ebbinghaus
1850–1909
Best known for turning memory into something that could be measured, he helped make psychology a more experimental science. His work on forgetting, repetition, and learning still shapes how people think about study and recall.
1 Audiobook
Psychology: an elementary text-book
by Hermann Ebbinghaus
About the author
Born in Barmen, Germany, in 1850, Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist whose research helped lay the groundwork for modern memory science. He is especially remembered for bringing careful experimentation to questions that had often been treated more philosophically than scientifically.
Working largely on his own, he studied how memory changes over time and became known for findings later called the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He also used invented, meaningless syllables in his experiments so he could test memory more cleanly, without the influence of prior knowledge.
Ebbinghaus taught at several German universities and published influential work including On Memory. He died in 1909, but his simple, rigorous approach to learning and recall remains central to psychology and education.