Tony Buzan

Anthony Peter "Tony" Buzan (Palmers Green, Enfield, Middlesex, 2 June 1942 – 13 April 2019) was an English author and educational consultant best known for popularising mind mapping, a method of drawing ideas from a central concept through branches carrying keywords, images and colour. His work belongs to popular writing on learning and the brain rather than to academic research.

He studied psychology, English, mathematics and science at the University of British Columbia in Canada and spent a year as a graduate student at Simon Fraser University. There he became deeply involved in Mensa, the high-IQ society, and later edited its International Journal. His public profile grew with a BBC television series of the 1970s, Use Your Head, whose ideas were then gathered into five books: Use Your Memory, Master Your Memory, Use Your Head, The Speed Reading Book and The Mind Map Book. He wrote or co-wrote more than eighty books, which were translated into many languages.

Buzan's ideas covered memory, creativity, speed reading and what he called mental literacy, the ability to organise thinking through visual associations and memory techniques. He proposed the "genius quotient" (GQ) as a complement to conventional intelligence tests and wrote on spiritual intelligence. He founded and chaired the Brain Foundation, helped establish the World Memory Championships and the World Championships of the Brain, co-founded London's Mind Body Spirit Festival and the Mind Sports Olympiad, and was involved in World Brain Day.

His influence is strongest in education, corporate training and mental-training programmes, although some of his claims about the brain have been criticised for lacking rigorous scientific support. Mind maps are now widely used in classrooms and workplaces, and his name remains closely tied to that way of thinking and taking notes.