Lessons in Memory from a Champ

A four-time winner of the USA Memory Championship is helping scientists understand how the brain works.

Written byJef Akst

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MEMORY MASTER: Nelson Dellis, four-time USA Memory Champion, preparing to memorize nine decks of cardsNELSON DELLIS

After Nelson Dellis’s grandmother passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in the summer of 2009, he became obsessed with memory. “I had seen her whole decline, so brain health was on my mind,” he says. He found out about annual memory competitions that tested people’s ability to remember large volumes of data—for example, the exact order of 104 playing cards in two decks—and began to learn the strategies so-called “memory athletes” used to pull off these incredible feats.

“I found the techniques worked, and with a bit of practice, you can do a lot more than you ever thought you could,” Dellis says.

He entered the 2010 USA Memory Championship in New York City and came in third. The next two years in a row, he ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
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Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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