This article discusses the history of studying Parkinson’s disease (PD), one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in the world and Russia. Many famous personalities suffer from this disease, including a Hollywood actor Michael J. Fox. However, the history of studying PD consists of several stages. The phenomenological stage is associated with the work «An Essay on Shaking Palsy» by James Parkinson, where the author described six patients. Fifty years after the essay was published, Jean Martin Charcot drew attention to patients with shaking palsy, and based on the Parkinson’s essay, put forward the theory that the main symptom of the disease is slowness. At the pathomorphological stage, the role of the loss of substantia nigra neurons in the development of PD was determined. The key work was the nigral theory of Konstantin Tretyakov. At the beginning of the 21st century, German scientists led by Heiko Braak put forward the stages of the neurodegenerative process theory, which explained the preclinical non-motor symptoms of PD, as well as a wide range of severe non-motor and axial disorders in the late stages of the disease. The neurobiological stage is associated with the establishment of the role of dopamine in the development of PD and the start of levodopa therapy. Since 1911, levodopa had been studied in the laboratory, but it was not until the 1950s that the Swedish pharmacologist Arvid Karlsson put forward the theory about the role of dopamine deficiency in the development of PD and suggested the therapeutic effect of levodopa. For his outstanding discovery, Arvid Karlsson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000. The clinical use of levodopa is associated with the names of Oleg Hornykiewicz and George Cotzias. In parallel, neurosurgical treatment of PD is being developed, deep brain stimulation and thalamotomy under the influence of focused ultrasound are being introduced. At the moment, there is a further improvement in the diagnosis of the disease, the genetics of PD is being studied, along with it, the range of treatment options is expanding.