Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer

German neuroscientist

Moustache type: Jay's

Born: 14 6 1864 (Markbreit, Bavaria)
Died: 19 12 1915 (Breslau, German Empire, aged 51, heart failure)

On the 3rd of November, 1906, Dr Aloysius “Alois” Alzheimer gave a speech to the South West German Society of Alienists. In it he described the case of Frau Auguste D., a recently-deceased patient of Frankfurt’s lunatic asylum, where Alzheimer worked. For five years Alzheimer had been obsessed with Frau D. who exhibited peculiar behaviour, including the loss of her short-term memory. After Frau D’s death, aged 56, Alzheimer analysed the patient’s brain and found the abnormalities that allowed him to present the first published case of ‘presenile dementia’, which would become known as Alzheimer’s Disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is today recognised as the most common form of dementia. It begins with short-term memory loss and degenerates to affect the victim’s ability to speak, move and recognise even close friends and relatives.

No doubt there are moustachioed scientists just as talented as Dr Alzheimer who have been omitted from this volume. To that one must counter, there lies the value of the eponym.