Hermann Ebbinghaus: biography of this German psychologist and philosopher.

This important researcher was noted for his contributions to the study of memory and forgetting.

Hermann Ebbinghaus is widely known in the world of psychology. This important psychologist and philosopher was one of the first to employ scientific methodology in the study and analysis of a higher cognitive capacity. Ebbinghaus made several contributions to the world of psychology, being especially relevant for being a pioneer in the study of memory.

In this article we are going to see a brief biography of Hermann Ebbinghaus..

Brief biography of Hermann Ebbinghaus

The birth of Hermann Ebbinghaus took place on January 24, 1850, in the Prussian town of Barmen. The son of wealthy merchant Carl Ebbinghaus and Julie Ebbinghaus, he was educated in a wealthy environment and in the Lutheran faith. What followed was one of the most remarkable research careers in the history of psychology.

Early years: training and military service

In 1867 a young Hermann Ebbinghaus would begin his university studies at the University of Bonn, interested in history and philology. During the course of his studies, however, his interests eventually turned to philosophy.

In 1870 he had to leave them temporarily to serve in the army in the serve in the army in the Franco-Prussian war, after which he resumed his studies.after which he resumed his studies. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1873, having elaborated a thesis based on the philosophy of the unconscious (from Hartmann's philosophical approach).

After obtaining his doctorate, Ebbinghaus would make trips to England and France, where he would would continue to train and perform various experiments while working as a tutor. while working as a tutor. During this period he would become acquainted with Fechner's work based on psychophysics, becoming convinced that it was possible to study higher mental processes from a scientific and reliable perspective.

Thus, he would begin to take an interest in what has turned out to be one of Ebbinghaus' most important and remarkable contributions to the field of psychology: his studies on memory. In fact, he is considered the father of the scientific study of memory.

Marriage, offspring and publication of "On memory".

On a personal level, in 1884 Ebbinghaus married Adelheid Julia Amalia Görlitz.. A year later their son, Julius Ebbinghaus, was born, who would eventually become an important neo-Kantian philosopher. That same year Ebbinghaus published in 1885 one of his most representative works, "Über das Gedächtnis" ("About memory"), in which he reflected his studies on this subject.

Research on memory, vision and learning

Memory was not the only aspect that Ebbinghaus investigated. In 1890 he became interested in and worked on the sense of sight, specifically the perception of color. Together with König, he founded the Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorganefocusing on sensory perception from both a psychological and physiological perspective. In this aspect also highlights the study of optical illusions, discovering that the perception of sizediscovering that the perception of the size of an object varies according to the size of the surrounding objects.

Four years later he would enter into a competition for the direction of the department of philosophy at the University of Berlin, which was awarded to the also well-known psychologist Carl Stumpf. He then accepted a position at the University of Breslau, where he returned to work again on the exploration of memory and learning.

He would also focus on the latter aspect to a great extent, aiming to do research and at the same time generate practical use of his research in the educational field. He created the gaps testbased on the reading of sentences in which the subject had to fill in the gaps left by the evaluator (first the complete sentences were read and then the same sentences without certain words or groups of words). This test was aimed at evaluating intelligence and memory in children.

Ebbinghaus' death and legacy

In 1905, he decided to leave the University of Breslau to move to the University of Halle, where he would live his last years. Ebbinghaus died in this city on February 26, 1909, as a result of pneumonia..

Throughout his life he published several publications of great interest, and his research and methods are still being used (albeit modified) today for various purposes. He was one of the first psychologists to use scientific methodology to analyze higher cognitive processes, and his legacy is extensive despite not having had disciples or having created currents of thought.

Study of memory and other scientific contributions

These studies would begin in 1878, when Hermann Ebbinghaus would begin to carry out various experiments using himself as the experimental subject and applying methodology based on psychophysics. It was common for him to use lists of nonsense words or pseudo-wordsbecause they allowed him to measure more objectively the capacity of memorization since he could not use elements such as meaning to support and facilitate recall. He generated the words randomly and then memorized them and tried to reproduce them orally.

Shortly afterwards, in 1880, he would be appointed assistant professor (something like associate professor) at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-University in Berlin. The results of the different experiments on memory and their subsequent analysis would lead him to elaborate such important and influential concepts as the forgetting curve and that of learning or the role of the review of the material to be learned in maintaining a content in the memory.