Ludo van Bogaert

Ludo van Bogaert (1897 to 1989) was a Belgian neurologist and neuropathologist, born in Antwerp into an old Flemish family in which his father and younger brother were both physicians. Wounded as a soldier in the First World War, he took up neurology, trained in Paris under Pierre Marie at the Pitié-Salpêtrière and under Marcel Labbé, and in 1933 was appointed head of internal medicine and neurology at the Bunge Research Institute in Antwerp. There he developed neurosurgery, neurophysiology, neuroradiology and neurochemistry alongside clinical neurology, and trained more than 300 specialists in the institute that grew into the Born-Bunge Foundation. He was remembered for 753 scientific publications and was one of the founders of the World Federation of Neurology in 1957, serving twice as its president. Several disorders carry his name, among them Van Bogaert encephalitis (subacute sclerosing leucoencephalitis), Nyssen-van Bogaert syndrome, Divry-van Bogaert syndrome and Van Bogaert-Hozay syndrome. In 1980 he received the first Humanitas Prize of the province of Antwerp.