Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory. He is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. He was the father of the neo-Kantian philosopher Julius Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Bonn in 1873. He was interested in philosophy and psychology, especially the works of Gustav Fechner and John Stuart Mill. He traveled to England and France, where he taught as a tutor and learned about the new developments in psychology. In 1879, he began his memory studies using himself as a subject. He devised 2,300 three-letter nonsense syllables to measure the formation and decay of mental associations. He recorded his results in meticulous detail and analyzed them with mathematical methods. He found that memory is orderly and follows predictable patterns. He published his findings in his book Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology in 1885. Ebbinghaus also conducted research on other topics, such as color vision, mental arithmetic, and school performance. He founded the psychological journal Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane with Arthur König in 1890. He taught at the University of Berlin, the University of Breslau, and the University of Halle. He wrote two textbooks on psychology: Grundzüge der Psychologie (Principles of Psychology) in 1902 and Abriss der Psychologie (Summary of Psychology) in 1908. Ebbinghaus died of pneumonia on February 26, 1909, in Halle. He was buried at the Gertraudenfriedhof Cemetery. His work influenced many later psychologists, such as Edward Thorndike, William James, Ivan Pavlov, and Edward Tolman. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern psychology and a pioneer of scientific methods in psychology.