Eugène Apert

Eugène Charles Apert (1868 to 1940) was a French paediatrician born in Paris, best known today because the condition he described bears his name. He took his doctorate in 1897 and was associated with the Hotel-Dieu and the Hopital Saint-Louis, then worked at the Hopital des Enfants-Malades in Paris from 1919 until 1934. The paediatrician Jacques-Joseph Grancher and the surgeon Paul Georges Dieulafoy influenced his career, he studied under the paediatrician Antoine Marfan, and he collaborated with the dermatologist Francois Henri Hallopeau. His research dealt mainly with genetic diseases and congenital abnormalities. In 1906 he published the case report on acrocephalosyndactyly, describing several people with malformations of the skull together with joined fingers; the condition came to be called Apert syndrome and is defined by craniosynostosis, syndactyly and underdevelopment of the upper jaw. He also wrote many works on paediatrics, among them an influential manual on child rearing, and he was a founding member of the French Society of Eugenics. He died on 2 February 1940.