Edward Flatau (1868-1932) and his eponym.

Abstract

Edward Flatau was born on December 27, 1869 in Plock (a city in central Poland) at a time when Poland was absent from official European maps since the territory of Poland had been divided between three neighboring countries: Germany, Russia, and Austria [8]. Since there were no official Polish schools or universities at those years, many Polish scientists had to fulfill their education abroad [8]. Edward Flatau was not the exception among many scientists. In 1886, he went to the University of Moscow for his medical education [6]. In Moscow, he was greatly influenced by the Russian psychiatrist Sergei Sergeievich Korsakoff (1854–1900) and the neurologist and psychiatrist Alexis Jakovlevich Kozhevnikof (1836– 1902). Flatau became a medical doctor in 1892 with the distinction of cum eximia lauda (with particular honor) and later continued his medical education and research activities, especially in neuroanatomy, in Berlin under the supervision of Emanuel Mendel (1839–1907), Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz (1836–1921), Karl August Eugen Alfred Goldscheider (1858–1935), and Ernst Viktor von Leyden (1832–1910) [6]. After completing his studies in Berlin (1893–1896), he returned to Poland and was appointed as the Head of the Department of Neurology at the Jewish Hospital in Czyste District of Warsaw (Warsaw’s Starozakonnych na Czystem Hospital) [6, 9]. He contributed to re-establish Polish neuroscience during and after Russian occupation and attempted to teach many Polish neurologists [8]. In 1911, he established a neurological laboratory in the Warsaw Psychologic Society. In 1913, he became the first head of the Department of Neurobiology of Warsaw Scientific Society (Warszawskie Towarzystwo Naukowe). In 1919, he was appointed as the head of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology which was then part of the Warsaw Scientific Society [1]. Together with Samuel Vulfovitsj Goldflam (1852–1932), he established the Pathology Scientific Institute and the medical periodical “Warszawskie Czasopismo Naukowe” [1]. He died in 1932, the same year with two other great neurologists, Joseph Jules Francois Felix Babinski (1857– 1932) and Samuel Vulfovitsj Goldflam (1852–1932). All of them died in a period of 5 months. In his last years, he had suffered from a brain tumor.