Professor Martin Anthony Conway, who has died aged 69, is best known for his pioneering and transformative work on human autobiographical memory. When he began his career in the 1980s, memory research was, in his words, “rather boring”. It was driven largely by experiments that involved learning lists of words or pictures, but Martin was inherently fascinated in more than this. He wanted to understand how we store and access the personal stories that make us who we are.He instinctively recognised that memories for lifetime experiences were are at the heart of human behaviour. 

Born and raised in Darlington, Martin left school at 15 with no qualifications but returned to education in his twenties, studying for his ‘O’ and then ‘A’ levels at evening classes while working as a train driver. Despite being teased by his fellow workmates, he would spend his tea breaks devouring texts by Wittgenstein and Freud. By 1980, he had completed a degree in Psychology at UCL in London and embarked on a PhD at the Open University. Here he carried out research that paved the way for research into autobiographical memory, a field that until that point had been largely neglected and was poorly understood.

Since then, Martin’s work has completely changed scientific understanding of human memory. He developed a number of powerful theoretical models to explain how the brain stores personal experiences, and in particular the role these memories play in creating our sense of self. This work has provided the basis for understanding many important memory phenomena, including the reliability of eyewitness testimony, the experience of déjà vu, our tendency to have particularly powerful memories of teenage years, the vivid “flashbulb” memories we have of dramatic events, and our ability to imagine the future.  He has also played an important role in understanding the experiences of people with amnesia and dementia. 

As well as being a brilliant scientist, Martin brought his love of poetry, music, philosophy and art into all he did. He had an extraordinary capacity to synthesise across disciplines, which made him hugely creative and great fun to work with. He was a modest, unpretentious and extremely generous mentor, always looking for ways to support and inspire others. All that knew him will miss his warmth and mischievous smile as well as his very sharp mind.

Above all else, Martin was a family man. He was adored by his wife Judith, five children and grandchildren. He passed away peacefully on Wednesday 30th March 2022, surrounded by his family. 

Martin and Judith designed, built and maintained a beautiful garden together in Darlington, encouraging much wildlife to flourish there wherever possible. Martin particularly enjoyed spending time in the garden watching a variety of birds, even a heron who was partial to his carefully selected koi carp. For this reason Judith has asked that any donations in memory of Martin are made to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.