Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist born on January 24, 1850, known for his pioneering work in the study of memory. He conducted experiments on himself to understand how we learn and forget information, leading to the development of the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, which illustrates how quickly we lose information over time without reinforcement. Ebbinghaus is also recognized for introducing the concept of nonsense syllables to eliminate the influence of prior knowledge on memory studies. His research laid the foundation for modern cognitive psychology and significantly influenced later studies on memory and learning processes.