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One of the most famous Italian anatomists of the 16th century was Giulio Cesare Aranzi, also known as Julius Caeser! He was credited with discovering and naming the hippocampus, the limbic structure very important in memory cognition. The term translates to "seahorse," which he found the structure to depict one. Even a century later, another anatomists at the time tried to rename the structure to other animal counterparts including "ram's horn" but Caeser's depiction was the one that stuck¹. At the time they didn't know the hippocampus was related to memory, however, the structure as a whole was identified and named, making it an interest for what it did for researchers in the years to come. The artifact below is a portrait of Julius Caeser from Bolgna, Italy from the 16th century. He was very famous in his time as a surgeon and anatomist, and had some famous publications on human anatomy as well¹.
(1) https://thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/122/4/article-p971.xml

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French anatomist, Paul Broca was famously most known for localization of brain function, especially for speech and language areas. However, he also contributed to localization of the limbic system and distinguished it of great importance in 1861. Other more lateral lobes of the brain had already been distinguished- the occipital, temporal, frontal and parietal lobe. However, the medial surface was a bit more ambiguous. Among the structures that make up the limbic system is the hippocampus. Broca's work distinguishing this "lobe" inspired James Papez, who in 1937 wrote "mechanism of emotion," turning this lobe into a system. In this, Papez summarized some studies of great clinical importance of the lesions of the cingulate, which resulted in memory impairments and changes in behavior¹. This was one of the first clinical studies relating this system to the function of memory. The artifact below represents the newer version of the "limbic lobe" drawn by Paul MacLean in 1949 who was inspired by both Papez and Broca with their work on the limbic system¹.
(1)
Pessoa, Luiz, and Patrick R Hof. “From Paul Broca's great limbic lobe to the limbic system.” The Journal of comparative neurology vol. 523,17 (2015): 2495-500. doi:10.1002/cne.23840

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In 1885, Herman Ebbinghaus published Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, which entailed his detailed research on an experiment he conducted involving memorizing nonsense 3-letter syllable combinations. The process involved drawing one, saying it aloud, then trying to remember it at the end of the experiment. He was the only participant in this experiment so it had some experimental limitations, however it was still important because similar tests today are run to study memory. From it, he was able to construct a "forgetting curve" that represented a decline in the ability to recall the words after longer periods of time from minutes to days after the experiment was conducted. Below is a video that describes his experiment greater detail and Ebbinghaus' results (0:25-5:00 min).

(1) http://scihi.org/hermann-ebbinghaus-memory/

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Memory: Forgetting Curve and Serial Position Effect

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One of the best clinical studies of memory impairment in history is from a patient known as HM in Hartford Connecticut by Brenda Milner. HM suffered from epileptic seizures, and in attempt to treat this, doctors performed a bilateral lesion of his temporal lobes in 1953. The surgery controlled his epileptic seizures, but now HM suffered from extreme memory impairments that would go on to be studied for 50 years in some fo the most important neuroscience findings to this day¹.  He had anterograde amnesia, which is the inability to make new memories². Prior to this, it was generally accepted  that memory consolidation wasn't necessarily localized yet, but was distributed throughout the cortex¹. (This was due to Karl Lashley- who I describe in greater detail in my docent entry). Below is a quote from Milner in 1957 that establishes the importance and localization of memory to the hippocampus¹. The other artifact I thought was interesting was the video, "Historical Introduction to the Neuroscience of Memory" (4:30-11:43), which describes HM's impairments in greater detail².

(1) Squire, Larry R. “The legacy of patient H.M. for neuroscience.” Neuron vol. 61,1 (2009): 6-9. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2008.12.023

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2to99YV2sRk

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Another important contribution to the knowledge of memory was a nonfiction biography written in 1968 by Alexander Luria called "The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory." Luria writes about a man with a uniquely extraordinary sense of memory for mnemonics after studying him for about 30 years. He also tells of his other unique qualities, such as the inability to forget, trouble with poetry, and synthesia¹. This case study of an individual possessing a gift like this seems to be written from more of a psychological prospective, however it eludes to some interesting questions in the field of memory and neuroscience. It also is pretty popular so opened up the field to advances in studying memory for years to come.
(1) https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/12247

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Long Term Potentiation was discovered in 1973 by Tim Bliss and Terje Lomo in Norway¹. They conducted their research in rabbits, finding that after increased stimulation of the synapses within the hippocampus caused increased synaptic plasticity and long-term effects days after the experiment². This is direct evidence of long term potentiation in mammalian brain and plays a substantial role in learning and memory research today.
Below is a figure from their paper on the experiment, showing the long lasting effects of the potentiation¹.

(1) https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1113/jphysiol.1973.sp010273

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627316309576#bib9

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An excellent guide for this memory museum would be Karl Lashley, an American psychologist who studying learning and memory in the early 1900s. He is famously known for his work with memory involving the search for the "engram" which he referred to as the region where memories were stored. He used lesioning in rats and was unfortunately unable to localize this area at first, so he claimed that they were spread and consolidated throughout the cortex¹. He had a lot of great work for his time with learning as well and I think he would have been great to lead the exhibit if he had known some of the later discoveries in the field of neuroscience that proceeded. Below is a picture of him.

(1) https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/karl-lashley

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Dr. Kirby, an assistant professor in behavioral neuroscience here at Ohio State researches the manipulation of different environmental stimuli on hippocampus response and neurogenesis. They found that adult hippocampal cells secrete a growth factor, VEGF which is important in neuroplasticity¹. This is an important finding in neuroscience because perhaps an increase in this factor could result in increased memory cognition. There have been findings beforehand that showed decrease plasticity in the hippocampus resulted in memory impairment as well¹. Looking at memory cognition into a molecular level could lead to a future of therapies for degenerative disorders and the field of neuroscience. While these past incidents looked at localization and unknown factors of memory, this molecular level study could lead to an array of answers in memory impairments or giftedness as for the case of the mnemonic. Below is from their experiment showing that VEGF expressed in vivo of mice.

(1) Kirby, ED, Kuwahara, AA, Messer, RL, Wyss-Coray, T. (2015). Adult hippocampal neural stem and progenitor cells regulate the neurogenic niche via secreted VEGF. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 112, 4128-4133. Direct submission. PubMed.