Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered experimental study of memory, and discovered the forgetting curve.

Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen. At age 17, he entered the University of Bonn. His first and foremost interest was psychology. His studies were interrupted in 1870 by the Franco-Prussian War. He enlisted in the Prussian army. He resumed his studies and received a Ph.D. in 1873.

In 1885, he published his groundbreaking Über das Gedchtnis ("On Memory", later translated to English as Memory. A Contribution to Experimental Psychology ) in which he described experiments he conducted on himself to describe the process of forgetting.

He was professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, and later in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). He died of pneumonia in Breslau at the age of 59.

His contributions are multiple. His famous work on memory initiated experimental psychology. He pioneered precise experimental techniques used in the research on learning. In addition to his research and lecturing, he established two psychology laboratories in Germany, and founded a major psychology journal.