Endel Tulving

Endel Tulving was born in Estonia in May 26, 1927 a cognitive psychologist and a Canadian scientist.

He moved to Germany when he was 17, then to Canada to attend the University of Toronto. He received his B.A in 1953 and his M.A in 1954. He then went to Harvard University and earned a PhD in experimental psychology in 1957.

When he was appointed to his first teaching post, at the University of Toronto in 1956, he intended to carry on with his studies of visual perception. But there was no budget for the necessary equipment. At the time Tulving knew absolutely nothing about memory, except that the research materials – principally pens and paper – were likely to be extremely cheap.

Tulving’s contribution to Psychology is in suggestion that memory comprises different forms. He developed the encoding specificity principle, that is, the idea that retrieval is better when it occurs in situations that match the conditions under which the memory was encoded.

He was also an early proponent of the idea that long-term memory involves multiple systems. When he introduced the concept of multiple systems, it was roundly criticized: today, it is universally accepted, in one form or another by memory scientist.
Endel Tulving