Among many other contributions, her work helped settle a debate about the function of the hippocampus in retrieving and reliving past experiences. Some scientists had argued that once a strong memory was stored, the hippocampus was not critical to retrieving it. Dr. Corkin’s work with H.M. showed that such a memory — getting lost in the woods at camp, say, or hitchhiking across the country — was still partly retrievable without the hippocampus.

She found, however, that the narrative richness of the memory was gone. Loose impressions remained, but the “story” was lost.

Image Henry Molaison, known in published reports as H.M. to protect his privacy

Gist memories, she called them.

“She was able to take this single case and do such meticulous work on the anatomy and its effects on memory that it helped settle these questions,” said Morris Moscovitch, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. “That is one hallmark of her work. The other is how much she cared for H.M. She wasn’t merely using him — she became his caretaker, she took care of him like family.”

Suzanne Janet Hammond was born in Hartford on May 18, 1937, the only child of Lester Hammond, who worked in engine parts sales, and the former Mabelle Dowling, who worked for the local Department of Motor Vehicles. She grew up in West Hartford — “just down the street,” as she said many years later, from Dr. William Beecher Scoville, the brain surgeon who operated on Mr. Molaison in 1953.

It was the era of the lobotomy, and Dr. Scoville was one of a number of swashbuckling surgeons doing experimental surgeries — they would be unethical today — for a variety of mental problems, including schizophrenia and severe depression, with often disastrous consequences. Mr. Molaison was that rarest of cases: Notwithstanding the seizures, he was mentally healthy and lucid, both before and after the surgery, making him an ideal experimental subject.

Dr. Corkin, after graduating from Smith College with a degree in psychology, knew exactly where she wanted to go: to Dr. Milner’s laboratory at McGill. She focused on studying how the brain represents touch, an area of research many students found too laborious to take on.