Few professionals can claim nearly 60 years of continuous service in their field. Even fewer have the dedication, passion, and break-through contributions that have made Dr. Harry Bahrick such a highly regarded professor and researcher in the field of psychology.

Born in Vienna, Austria, Dr. Bahrick's family fled the Nazis, settling in the United States in 1940. He served in the U.S. Army and earned undergraduate degrees from the University of West Virginia. During his studies at Ohio State, he worked as a research associate at the university's internationally respected Laboratory of Aviation Psychology.

In 1949, Dr. Bahrick began his career at Ohio Wesleyan University as an instructor of psychology. Since then, Bahrick has continued his service to the university where he has served as an assistant professor, associate professor, professor, and, following his retirement in 1990, as a research professor-the university's only such professorship.

Although Dr. Bahrick's body of work has been conducted largely at an undergraduate university, his accomplishments rival those of professors at the country's most elite research institutions. At the same time, he has been an inspiration to countless undergraduates-more than 100 of whom have earned doctoral degrees in psychology-who were afforded a rare opportunity to learn in this research environment.

His studies into how people maintain their long-term memory challenged the conventional thinking of earlier researchers who believed knowledge was linked to individual associations. Dr. Bahrick introduced the concept of permastore, whereby content learned and relearned over several years could remain in our memories, even without further memory rehearsals.

"His development of the concept of maintenance of knowledge and his invention of methods for its investigation has been fundamental to both the practical and theoretical aspects of memory," stated Dr. Harvey Freeman, professor of psychology at Ohio Wesleyan, in his nomination.

Today Dr. Bahrick continues his research, funded by the National Institute of Aging, by studying cognitive aging and knowledge access. This research may not only help psychologists understand knowledge gaps in older adults, but also could lead to an earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

In addition to his work at Ohio Wesleyan, Dr. Bahrick is an adjunct professor at Ohio State and the University of South Florida. He has been a visiting professor at Kenyon College, the Ulm Hochschule, the University of Marburg, the University of Hamburg, and the University of Graz.

His work has been published in more than 50 professional publications and textbooks. Some of Dr. Bahrick's most notable works include Fifty Years of Memory for Names and Faces, Fifty Years of Memory of College Grades, and Retention of Spanish Vocabulary over Eight Years.

Dr. Bahrick has received numerous honors throughout his career including the Ohio State Department of Psychology's 2008 Distinguished Alumnus Award and the American Psychological Foundation's Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award in 1994.