Karl S. Lashley (1890–1958) Lashley was trained as a zoologist but turned to psychology after he became friends with John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism. Interested in discovering the physical basis of the conditioned reflex, Lashley focused his research on how learning and memory were represented in the brain. After years of frustrating research, Lashley (1950) humorously concluded, “This series of experiments has yielded a good bit of information about what and where memory is not. It has discovered nothing directly of the real nature of the engram. I sometimes feel in reviewing the evidence on the localization of the memory trace, that the necessary conclusion is that learning just is not possible.”

Archives of the History of American Psychology, The University of Akron. Color added by the publisher.