Endel Tulving

Endel Tulving (born May 26 1927) is a Canadian neuroscientist, born in Estonia, whose speciality is episodic memory. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. In 2005 he won a Gairdner Foundation International Award, Canada's leading prize in biology and medicine.

Many would agree that he is the most creative and insightful theoretician the field of memory has ever known. In this regard, his theory of "encoding specificity" may be his most significant contribution. The theory emphasizes the fact that memories are retrieved from long-term memory by means of retrieval cues. For example, a very large number of memories stored in ones brain are not currently active, but the word "Disneyland" might instantly call to mind a trip to that amusement park. The theory of encoding specificity states that the most effective retrieval cues are those that were stored along with the memory of the experience itself. Thus, the words "amusement park" might not serve to retrieve the memory of a trip to Disneyland because, while there, the park was not specifically thought of as an "amusement park." Instead, it was thought of as Disneyland. As such, that is the cue that retrieves the appropriate memory from the vast ocean of memories that are stored in one's brain. This theory of how memories are retrieved almost seems obvious once it is explained, but it was not at all obvious before Endel Tulving explained it and then demonstrated its validity in a series of seminal studies.

In 1979, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1992, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.