Edward Flatau (1868–1932) — world-leading pioneer of neurology and neurosurgery

Polish neurology and neurosurgery owe a very great deal to Edward Flatau. He was a pioneer of these disciplines in Poland whose influence extends worldwide, and we recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of his birth. Edward Flatau’s grandson, an outstanding physicist who has been living in San Diego in the USA for many years, has published a book ‘Edward Flatau and his comet: beginnings of Polish neurology’. Its promotion took place in the Flatau hometown of Płock in Poland. In 1894, Edward Flatau published his notable work: ‘Atlas of the human brain and the trajectory of fibres’, the result of arduous work on brain sections and images that were captured with an especially designed camera. These photographs caused a publishing sensation at the end of the 19th century. The atlas was published in German and almost immediately translated into Polish, Russian, French and English. The most distinguished work of Edward Flatau was his great 1912 study of migraine headaches entitled ‘Migraine’, which has still not become out-of-date and is regularly quoted in international literature today