gms | German Medical Science

The neurobiologist Christfried Jakob is - by the opinion of the embassy of the republic of Argentina in Berlin – one of the most important German immigrants to this country.

Born 1866 in Wörnitzostheim Jakob joined the University of Erlangen for medical studies 1886 – 1890. In the following four years he took part in the neurobiological and neurological research of his mentor Adolf von Strümpell. After a short period as physician in Bamberg Jakob 1898 emigrated to Buenos Aires for establishing the first neuropathological laboratory in that place.

He published the next 50 years some hundred papers and books on the human cortex, the development of brain, palaeoneurology, comparative neurology, general neuropathology and other topics. He is assumed to be the first thinking about the limbic brain. He founded a scientific school of neurobiologists and corresponded with some of the most important colleagues of his time e.g. Ludwig Edinger and Ramon y Cajal. Jakob was very engaged to establish interdisciplinary networks with members of his alma mater (e.g., the ethnologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, the zoologist Clemente Onelli). Later he wrote some philosophical pamphlets. In journeys and expeditions to the southern argentine he explored the geology and fauna of these regions.

The life of this relatively unknown neuropathologist was recently documented in a small biographical sketch in German language.