In June 1903, a researcher and pathologist named Alois Alzheimer (born Aloysius Alzheimer in 1864) was invited to open a psychiatric clinic in Munich, Germany, along with another physician named Emil Kraepelin. The clinic was supposed to focus especially on brain research.

Three years later, Alzheimer gave a well-known conference at the 37th Congress of Psychiatrists in Southern Germany.

In his speech, Alzheimer stated that he had identified an “unusual disease of the cerebral cortex” that afflicted a woman named Auguste D. The disease caused memory loss, disorientation and hallucinations, leading to Auguste’s death at the age of 50.

During the autopsy, Augusta’s brain revealed various abnormalities. The cerebral cortex was much thinner than usual, but this discovery was given little importance. It was only in 1910 that Kraepelin called the disease “Alzheimer’s disease” in the 8th edition of the “Manual of Psychiatry”.

About Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer was born in 1864 in Markbreit in Bavaria, southern Germany. Outstanding at school, he studied medicine in Berlin, Aschaffenburg, Tübingen and Würzburg, graduating in 1887. The following year, he began working at a public hospital in Frankfurt am Main, becoming interested in research into the human cerebral cortex. Here he began to study psychiatry and neuropathology.

Together with Franz Nissl, a hospital colleague, Alzheimer spent the next few years working on a major six-volume study, Histological and Histopathological Studies of the Cerebral Cortex, describing the pathology of the nervous system. The work was finally published between 1907 and 1918.

While working at the asylum, Alois married Cecile Simonet Nathalie Wallerstein, with whom he had two children, Gertrude and Hans. Unfortunately, Alois’ marriage to Cecile lasted only 7 years, Cecile died in 1901. Shortly after Cecilia’s death, Alzheimer decided to move to Munich at the invitation of Emil Kraepelin.

In 1913, en route to Breslau, Germany, Alzheimer contracted a severe cold complicated by endocarditis. He never fully recovered and died in 1915 at the age of 51, buried next to his wife in the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt am Main.

Today, the pathological diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is generally based on the same research methods that were used in 1906.