Hermann Ebbinghaus: biography of this German psychologist

Hermann Ebbinghaus is widely known within the world of psychology. This important psychologist and philosopher was one of the first to use scientific methodology in the study and analysis of superior cognitive ability. Ebbinghaus made various contributions to the world of psychology, being especially relevant for being a pioneer in the study of memory.

In this article we will see a short biography of Hermann Ebbinghaus.

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Brief biography of Hermann Ebbinghaus

Hermann Ebbinghaus was born on January 24, 1850, in the Prussian city of Barmen. The son of the wealthy merchant Carl Ebbinghaus and Julie Ebbinghaus, he was raised in wealthy surroundings and in the Lutheran faith. What followed was one of the most remarkable research careers in the history of psychology.

Early Years: Military Training and Service

In 1867 a young Hermann Ebbinghaus began his university studies at the University of Bonn, interested in history and philology. However, during the course of his studies his interests ended up focusing on philosophy.

In 1870 he had to temporarily leave them to serve in the army in the Franco-Prussian War, after which he would resume his studies. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1873, having developed 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 continue to train and perform different experiments while he was working as a tutor. During this time he would get to know Fechner's work based on psychophysics, being convinced that it was possible to study higher mental processes from a scientific and reliable perspective.

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

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Marriage, descent and publication of "Sobre la memoria"

Personally, in 1884 Ebbinghaus would marry Adelheid Julia Amalia Görlitz. A year later, their son, Julius Ebbinghaus, would be born, who in time would become an important neo-Kantian philosopher. That same year Ebbinghaus would publish in 1885 one of his most representative works, "Über das Gedächtnis" ("On memory"), in which he reflected his studies in this matter.

Research on memory, vision and learning

Memory was not the only aspect that Ebbinghaus investigated. In 1890 he began to be interested in and work on the sense of sight, specifically the perception of color. Together with König he founded the publication Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, focused on sensory perception from both a psychological and a physiological perspective. In this aspect he also highlights the study of optical illusions, discovering that the perception of the size of an object varies according to the size of those around it.

Four years later he would enter into a contest for the direction of the department of philosophy at the University of Berlin, which was awarded to the also well-known psychologist Carl Stumpf. After that he would accept a position at the University of Breslau, where he would go back to work again on exploring memory and learning.

In this last aspect he would also focus to a great extent, pretending to investigate at the same time as generating practical use of his research in the educational field. He created the gap test, based 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 later the same ones but without certain words or groups of words). This test was aimed at evaluating intelligence and memory in children.

Ebbinghaus's death, and legacy

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

Throughout his life he made various publications of great interest, and his research and methods continue to be used (albeit modified) to this day for various purposes. He is one of the first psychologists to use scientific methodology to analyze cognitive processes superiors, his legacy being broad despite not having had disciples or creating streams of thought.

Memory study and other scientific contributions

These studies would begin from 1878, when Hermann Ebbinghaus would begin to carry out various experiments using himself as an experimental subject and applying methodology based on the psychophysical. It was common for him to use lists of nonsense words or pseudowords, because they allowed to measure in a more objective way the memorization capacity by not being able to use elements such as the meaning to support and facilitate the memory. He generated the words randomly and later memorized them and tried to reproduce them orally.

Soon after, 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 concepts as important and influential as the curve of oblivion and that of learning or the role of reviewing the material to be learned when maintaining content in memory.

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