Historical vignette: Leonard T. Kurland, FACE (1921–2001), the rise of neuroepidemiology, and the Rochester Epidemiology Project

Abstract

The creation of the field of neuroepidemiology was one of the two principal professional achievements of the American College of Epidemiology Fellow Leonard T. Kurland (1921–2001), the other being the establishment of the Rochester Project. In the former, Kurland established the role of the neuroepidemiologists in the development of the corpus of knowledge needed to control and prevent the occurrence of neurological conditions. Two examples of his endeavors in this regard were his work on the Guamanian focus of neurodegenerative diseases and his seminal investigations into the epidemiology of multiple sclerosis. He was also instrumental in the development of the Rochester, Minnesota community as a population laboratory within which epidemiologic investigations could be mounted. This pioneering achievement created a resource used by many generations of epidemiologists and clinicians to examine health and disease in the population.