Alois Alzheimer (
June 14,
1864 -
December 19,
1915), a
German neurologist, was a colleague of
Emil Kraepelin who first identified the symptoms of what is now known as
Alzheimers Disease. He observed the disease in
1906. He was born in a small town called Marktbreit,
Bavaria, where his father served in the office of notary public. Alzheimer attended
Aschaffenburg,
Tübingen,
Berlin, and Würzberg universities. He received a medical degree at Würzberg University in
1887. In the following year, he spent five months assisting mentally ill women, before he took an office in the city mental assylum in
Frankfurt am Main: the Städtische Irrenanstalt. Emil Stoli was the dean of that assylum (
1852-
1922). Another neurologist, Franz Nissl (
1860-
1919), began to work in that same assylum with Alzheimer, and they knew each other. Alzheimer was the co-founder and co-publisher of the German journal called
Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie. He fell ill on the train to University of Breslau and died of
endocarditis at the age of 51, five months after arrival to
Breslau (now Wroclaw,
Poland).
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