Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer was a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist who is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Emil Kraepelin would later name as Alzheimer's disease. He was born on June 14, 1864 in Marktbreit, a small Bavarian village in southern Germany, where his father was a notary. He studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, and Würzburg, where he graduated with a medical degree in 1887. He then worked at the state asylum in Frankfurt am Main, where he became interested in research on the cortex of the human brain. He collaborated with Franz Nissl, another neurologist, on a six-volume study of the pathology of the nervous system. He also met Emil Kraepelin, one of the best-known German psychiatrists of the time, who became his mentor and colleague. In 1903, he moved to Munich to work at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital with Kraepelin. There he encountered Auguste Deter, a 51-year-old woman who suffered from progressive memory loss, disorientation, and hallucinations. He followed her case until her death in 1906, when he performed an autopsy on her brain. He found that her cerebral cortex was thinner than normal and had abnormal deposits of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. He presented his findings at a scientific meeting in 1906, describing the disease as an "unusual disease of the cerebral cortex". However, his discovery did not receive much attention until 1910, when Kraepelin named it Alzheimer's disease in his Handbook of Psychiatry. Alzheimer continued his research on brain disorders until his death on December 19, 1915 from endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart valves. He was buried at the Frankfurt Main Cemetery in Frankfurt am Main. He was survived by his two children, Gertrude and Hans, from his marriage to Cecilie Simonette Nathalie Geisenheimer, who died in 1901. Alzheimer's legacy is his contribution to the understanding of dementia and other neurological diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. His name is synonymous with one of the most common and devastating forms of cognitive impairment in older adults.