Permanent Present Tense looks to be an interesting rememberance of H.M. by one of his researchers, Suzanne Corkin. The review sparks some tantalizing thoughts about memory and identity: "His personality remained intact, he still had above average IQ and language skills, though for more than 50 years he was able to acquire only the tiniest fragments of self-knowledge." It must have been profoundly unsettling every day for him.
Most of us think of scientists as those who experiment, think and record to comprehend the universe. Though he'll never get a Nobel Prize, we need to acknowledge Henry Molaison as one of history's most significant contributors as the accidental scientist whose own life was an endless quest for comprehension. As he apparently said to Corkin: "I'm living and you're learning."
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