Hermann Ebbinghaus

Personal Info Born January 24, 1850 in Barmen, in the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia Brought up in Lutheran faith Started attending the University of Bonn at the age of 17 where he intended to study history and philology, but developed an interest in philosophy Short stint in the military when he served the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War At the age of 34, Ebbinghaus married Adelheid Julia Amalia Ebbinghaus, whom he had a son by the name of Julius Karl Ludwig Ebbinghaus

Professional Info In 1878 and 1879, Ebbinghaus conducted his first set of memory experiments He subsequently conducted second set of experiments in 1883 and 1884 In 1885, he published his groundbreaking Über das Gedächtnis (Memory. A Contribution to Experimental Psychology) in which he described experiments he conducted on himself to describe the processes of learning and forgetting He joined Breslau, he worked as a professor from 1894 to 1905

Theory Created the theories of the forgetting curve, spacing effect. Learning curve The forgetting curve describes the exponential loss of information that one has learned. The sharpest decline occurs in the first twenty minutes and the decay is significant through the first hour. The curve levels off after about one day The learning curve refers to how fast one learns information. The sharpest increase occurs after the first try and then gradually evens out, meaning that less and less new information is retained after each repetition. Like the forgetting curve, the learning curve is exponential