Nelson Dellis

Dellis was born in Wimbledon, UK, to a Belgian mother and a French father, and grew up in England, France, and the United States.[4][5] He attended high school at Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, Florida.[4] After graduation, he went on to attend the University of Miami, where he graduated with a major in physics and a minor in mathematics. He then earned a master's degree in computer science, also from the University of Miami, and wrote his thesis on automated reasoning.[4][5] He is a mountain climber who has climbed on four expeditions to Mount Everest, and has scaled Alaska's Mount McKinley along with other mountains around the world.[4][5][6]

Dellis was originally inspired to improve his memory after seeing the decline of his grandmother's memory due to Alzheimer's disease, and entered his first memory competition in 2009.[7] He has since placed in a number of competitions as well as broken numerous memory records (see below).

Dellis was featured in the 2012 documentary Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles at a Sword: The Journey of a Mental Athlete.[5] He also appeared in the Science Channel program Memory Games in July 2013, which covered the 2013 US Memory Championships.[8] He has also been interviewed regarding memory training on Today,[9] The Dr. Oz Show,[10] and Nightline.[11]

As of Oct. 28, 2019, Dellis held 3 American records.[50][51] He was the first American to memorize a deck of cards at an international competition in under 60 seconds.[52] He was also the second American to achieve the Grand Master of Memory title.[53]

Dellis holds a number of memory records, including the US national record for memorizing the most names in 15 minutes, 235 names.[54] He also is the former record holder for memorizing a deck of shuffled cards in 63 seconds[5] as well as for memorizing the most digits in 5 minutes, with 339 digits memorized.[55] He is also ranked 15th in the world for memorizing a deck of cards, with a time of 40.65 seconds, one of the fastest times for an American in an international competition.[56] He currently ranks 50th in the world as a memory athlete.[57]

Before becoming involved in memory athletics, Dellis worked as a software developer for Wolfram Research.[55] He also worked as a Veterinary Technician and as a Vedic Mathematics (mental math) teacher at Math Monkey of Pinecrest in Miami. In Chicago, he worked at a local yarn shop, experimenting with large scale knitting projects. He now works as a public speaker and memory consultant, giving talks on his climbs as well as holding seminars about memory techniques.[5][55] Dellis also co-founded Memory League (formerly, Extreme Memory Tournament), a type of competitive memory platform that allows memory enthusiasts to challenge each other online.[1] He has also authored numerous books: a children's picture book called "I Forgot Something (but I can't remember what it was)" (2016) designed to teach children the basics of memory techniques,[58] "Remember It! The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget" (2018), a memory technique, how-to book for the everyday person, [59] and "Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget" (2020), a memory technique how-to book for kids in school. [60]

In 2010, Dellis founded Climb for Memory, a charity organization that raises money for Alzheimer's research through sponsored mountain climbs undertaken by Dellis.[5] Fusion-io sponsored an ascent of Everest in 2013, following up on a 2011 attempt in which Dellis had to turn back 280 feet from the summit due to equipment failure.[6] He also attempted Everest in 2016 but turned around at the South Col because of developing HAPE. In 2021, Nelson made another attempt on Everest, reaching 8300 meters before turning around. [61]

Nelson was a contestant on Superhuman, the American version of The Brain, making it to the finals of his episode by memorizing bank vault codes and then having to open them from memory, while being suspended from the ceiling.[62]

Nelson has been featured in The Wall Street Journal,[63] The New Yorker,[64] Mashable,[65] CNN,[66] Yahoo!,[67] Lifehacker,[68] Vital Signs with Dr. Sanjay Gupta,[69] Today,[70] Men's Health,[71] among others.

In 2012, Nelson began production for a documentary called Memory Games with Emmy Award-winning director Janet Tobias.[72][73][74] The documentary premiered in New York in November 2018. Memory Games was bought by Netflix and launched on June 19, 2019. [75]

Nelson was featured in the 2019 season of the Netflix series Unnatural Selection. In the show, geneticist Preston Estep says it is important to obtain genomic information from extraordinary people. Dr. Estep tests Nelson's recall abilities using playing cards and DNA, and then the two tour a genetics lab and observe large DNA sequencing machines as they discuss sequencing Nelson's genome.

• Remember It!: The Names of People You Meet, All of Your Passwords, Where You Left Your Keys, and Everything Else You Tend to Forget, Abrams Books Press HC, September 25, 2018, ISBN 978-1-41973-256-0
• Memory Superpowers!: An Adventurous Guide to Remembering What You Don’t Want to Forget, Abrams Books for Young Readers, August 18, 2020, ISBN 978-1-41973-187-7

• World Memory Championships
• USA Memory Championship
• Grand Master of Memory
• Memory sport
• Mnemonist

• Official website
• Climb For Memory
• Memory League