Hermann Ebbinghaus was the founder of the experimental psychology of memory. He laid the foundation for the scientific study of memory in a monograph titled Über das Gedächtnis (1885), translated into English in 1913 under the title Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology.

Life

Ebbinghaus was born on January 23, 1850, at Barmen, near Bonn, Germany. His father was a well-to-do merchant. He studied languages and philosophy at the University of Bonn. He served in the army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, and upon returning to the university completed his doctoral dissertation in 1873. He then spent some five years traveling in France and England. He began his research on memory at Berlin in 1878, spending more than a year on the initial set of experiments. Upon completing these studies he became a private lecturer at the University of Berlin in 1880, and he continued his studies of memory...