author
Hermann Ebbinghaus
1850–1909
Best known for turning memory into something that could be measured, this German psychologist helped lay the groundwork for modern research on learning. His studies of forgetting, repetition, and recall still shape how people think about memory today.
1 Audiobook
Psychology: an elementary text-book
by Hermann Ebbinghaus
About the author
Born in Barmen, Germany, in 1850, Hermann Ebbinghaus became one of the key early figures in experimental psychology. He is widely remembered for pioneering the scientific study of memory at a time when many mental processes were still discussed mostly in philosophical terms.
Working with carefully controlled self-experiments, he studied how people learn and forget, often using lists of made-up syllables so that previous knowledge would not affect the results. This work led to ideas now famous in psychology, including the forgetting curve and the spacing effect, and it was published in his influential book On Memory.
Ebbinghaus also taught at major German universities and helped establish psychology as an experimental discipline. He died in Halle in 1909, but his methods and findings remain central to the history of cognitive psychology.