From the moment of his ill-fated operation in 1953 Henry Molaison became world famous, yet few people knew his name.
Until his death at the age of 82 in 2008, the Connecticut man who had lost his ability to form and store new memories was known simply as HM to the scores of scientists and researchers studying his case.
Although he had been a willing test subject for neurologists since 1957, Mr Molaison's unique condition whereby his memory is wiped after about 30 seconds, was protected by those who researched him and the nursing home staff who cared for him.
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Mr Molaison, who had suffered from epilepsy when he was a teenager, was 27 when a famous surgeon removed part of his brain in the belief that it would ease his seizures.
From the moment William Beecher Scoville operated on Mr Molaison, he lost the ability to retain new information after about 30 seconds.
While Mr Molaison may have lost the ability to learn, his condition helped move forward knowledge of the brain.
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'He always lived in the moment, fully accepting the events of daily life. From the time of the operation, every new person he met was forever a stranger, yet he approached each one with openness and trust. He remained as good natured and pleasant as the polite, quiet person his high-school classmates knew,' Suzanne Corkin wrote.
She added that he also liked to make jokes, telling NPR: 'He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he would come up with little quips that were appropriate to a specific moment, nothing that he had made up before, rehearsed or he knew from his preoperative life.'
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