Hermann Ebbinghaus (January 24, 1850 ¨C February 26, 1909) was a German psychologist.

Born 24 January 1850 in Barmen, near Bonn, Germany, and died 26 February 1909 in Halle. At the age of 17, he entered Bonn University to study history and philosophy, then entered Halle University and Berlin University for further study, and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1873. Served in the army during the Franco-Prussian War. After the war, he devoted himself to research in Berlin, England and France, and his interest turned to science. In 1876, Ebbinghaus bought an old copy of Fechner's Compendium of Psychophysics at a bookstall in Paris. This accident had a deep impact on him, and soon also influenced the new psychological science. Fechner's mathematical methods of studying psychological phenomena made young Ebbinghaus suddenly enlightened, and he was determined to study memory through rigorous and systematic measurements, just as Fechner studied psychophysics. Prior to this, W. Wundt had announced that advanced mental processes such as learning and memory could not be studied experimentally. In addition, at that time, Ebbinghaus had neither a university teaching position, nor a teacher, nor special equipment and laboratory for research. However, even so, he spent five years, using himself as a subject, conducting experiments alone, and completing a series of controlled studies. In 1886, he was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Berlin. In 1890, Ebbinghaus co-founded the Journal of Psychology and Sensory Physiology. In 1894, he was appointed Professor at Blausley University. In 1905, he was appointed professor at Halle University.

Ebbinghaus's research methods are objective, experimental, and quantifiable through meticulous observation and recording. His program is to put the data foundation on top of time-tested research of association and learning. He deduced that the difficulty of learning a material can be measured by the number of repetitions required to learn the material, and the calculated number of repetitions can also be used as a standard for complete reproduction. In order to make the experiment orderly, he even adjusted his personal habits, tried to keep them normal, worked according to the same strict daily practice, and always studied materials at the same time every day. Ebbinghaus invented meaningless syllables for memory material. He found that there are certain difficulties in using prose or poetry as memory materials, because everyone has different cultural backgrounds and knowledge experiences, and people who understand language tend to associate meaning or association with words. These formed associations can help the learning of materials, so that the meaning cannot be controlled. For this reason, Ebbinghaus looked for some materials that did not form associations, were completely similar and equally unfamiliar to the subjects. Experiments with these materials could not have any past associations. This material is meaningless syllables. A meaningless syllable is composed of two consonants interposed with a vowel, such as lef, bok or gat. He wrote all possible combinations of consonants and vowels on different cards, which gave him 2,300 syllables, from which he randomly selected those for learning. Ebbinghaus's research in the field of memory psychology mainly involves the following aspects:

(1) To identify the difference between the speed of recognizing meaningless sounds and the speed of recognizing meaningful materials. To determine this difference, he recognised sections in Byron's poem Don Quijote, each of which had 80 sounds. He found that it was necessary to read about 9 times to remember a piece. Then he identified 80 meaningless sounds, and found that it took almost 80 times to repeat the task. So he concluded that the average time for learning meaningless materials was almost 9 times as difficult as learning meaningful materials. (2) The length and quantity of the material had an effect on the number of repetitions necessary for full reproduction. He found that the longer material needed more repetitions, i.e. more time to learn, and increased the number of sounds learned, resulting in a significant increase in the average time for learning each sound. The conclusion was that the more material we

In 1880, Abinhaus was hired at the University of Berlin, where he continued to study memory, and repeated and validated his early research. In 1885, he published the book On Memory, one of the most outstanding research achievements in the history of experimental psychology, which opened a whole new field of research. Psychology historian E.G. Pauline commented: ¡°This is time-breaking, not only because of the scope and style of the article it involves, but because it was immediately seen as an obstacle that experimental psychology broke through to the study of advanced psychological processes. Abinhaus opened a new field....¡±

In 1886, he was promoted by the University of Berlin as an associate professor. In 1890, he created a laboratory and founded the journal Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs. However, because of the absence of memories, he was no longer promoted at the University of Berlin. In 1894, he was appointed to a lower-level position at the University of Breslau, where he worked until 1905. During the period, he developed the sentence filling test, which was also the first successful test for the study of advanced psychological processes, and its variation was adopted by many of the current general intelligence tests. In 1902, Abbey Hussein published a very successful textbook, The Principles of Psychology, which in 1908 published the more popular textbook, The Psychological Overview. Both books were reissued, and Abbey Husse

Although Ebbinghaus did not establish a school of thought, he did not form a formal theoretical system. However, his important position in the history of psychology can be seen in a comment by psychologist D. Schultz: "A measure of the total historical value of a scientist is whether his views and research results can stand the test of time. According to such standards, Ebbinghaus can be considered more important than Wundt. His research brought objectivity, quantification and experimental methods to the study of association or learning. It is because of Ebbinghaus's research that the concept of association has changed from merely speculating its characteristics to experimenting with the help of scientific methods. Plus, many of his findings about learning and memory are still reliable today, a hundred years later. There are very few psychologists in the history of psychology who can get this evaluation. "