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Alois Alzheimer ( , ; 14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915) was a German psychiatrist, neuropathologist and colleague of Emil Kraepelin. He is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin later identified as Alzheimer's disease.
The Alzheimers moved to Aschaffenburg when Alois was still young in order to give their children an opportunity to attend the Royal Humanistic Gymnasium (high school). After graduating with Abitur in 1883, Alzheimer studied medicine at University of Berlin, University of Tübingen, and University of Würzburg. In his final year at university, he was a member of a fencing fraternity, and even received a fine for disturbing the peace while out with his team. In 1887, Alzheimer graduated from Würzburg as Doctor of Medicine.
While at the Frankfurt asylum, Alzheimer also met Emil Kraepelin, one of the best-known German psychiatrists of the time. Kraepelin became a mentor to Alzheimer, and the two worked very closely for the next several years. When Kraepelin moved to Munich to work at the Royal Psychiatric Hospital in 1903, he invited Alzheimer to join him.
At the time, Kraepelin was doing clinical research on psychosis in senile patients; Alzheimer, on the other hand, was more interested in the lab work of senile illnesses. They faced many challenges involving the politics of the psychiatric community. For example, formal and informal arrangements were made among psychiatrists at asylums and universities to receive cadavers.
In 1904, Alzheimer completed his habilitation at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), where he was appointed as a professor in 1908. Afterward, he left Munich for the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau in 1912, where he accepted a post as professor of psychiatry and director of the Neurologic and Psychiatric Institute. His health deteriorated shortly after his arrival so that he was hospitalized. He died three years later.
Alzheimer is known for having a variety of medical interests including vascular diseases of the brain, early dementia, brain tumors, forensic psychiatry and epilepsy.
On 8 April 1906, Auguste Deter died, and Alzheimer had her medical records and brain brought to Munich where he was working in Kraepelin's laboratory. With two Italian physicians, he used the newly developed Bielschowsky stain to identify amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. These brain anomalies became identifiers of what is now known as Alzheimer's disease.
On 3November 1906, Alzheimer discussed his findings on the brain pathology and symptoms of presenile dementia publicly, at the Tübingen meeting of the Southwest German Psychiatrists. The attendees at this lecture seemed uninterested in what he had to say. The lecturer that followed Alzheimer was to speak on the topic of "compulsive masturbation", which the audience of 88 individuals was so eagerly awaiting that they sent Alzheimer away without any questions or comments on his discovery of the pathology of a peculiar case of early-onset dementia.
Following his presentation, Alzheimer published a short paper summarizing his presentation; in 1907 he wrote a longer paper detailing the disease and his findings. It became known as Alzheimer's disease in 1910, when Kraepelin named it so in the chapter on "Presenile and Senile Dementia" in the 8th edition of his Handbook of Psychiatry. By 1911, his description of the disease was being used by European physicians to diagnose patients in the US.
Additional case descriptions by Alzheimer and his colleagues continued in the following years, including older patients than the early-onset dementia of Auguste Deter. Alzheimer eventually conceived "his" disease as mainly characterized clinically by a severe dementia with instrumental symptoms, and pathologically by extended neurofibrillary tangles. He debated fiercely with Oskar Fischer, a German-speaking pathologist from Prague, who instead emphasized on the importance of Amyloid plaques and of presbyophrenia as the phenotype. Finally, it must be highlighted that Fischer–Alzheimer's nosological considerations had less impact than Emil Kraepelin's 1910 Textbook of Psychiatry, which distinguished between "Alzheimer's disease" and senile dementia, including presbyophrenia. This textbook had a strong influence on early 20th century research on senile dementia and played a significant role in the classification of dementia in the following decades.
Alzheimer and Fischer had different interpretations of the disease, but owing to Alzheimer's short life, they never had the opportunity to meet and discuss their ideas.
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