António Egas Moniz

António Egas Moniz, full name António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, was a Portuguese physician born on 29 November 1874 in Avanca, Portugal, who died in Lisbon on 13 December 1955. At the time of his Nobel award he was affiliated with the University of Lisbon and with the Neurological Institute in Lisbon. In the mid-1930s he introduced lobotomy, also called leucotomy, a surgical operation that makes an incision into the prefrontal lobe of the brain in order to relieve the severe symptoms of serious mental illness. For this work he received half of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Walter Hess, for the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses. The operation became widespread in the 1940s and 1950s, but it then became clear that it could cause serious personality changes, and its use declined sharply once medications for mental illness were developed during the 1950s. His name is therefore tied to one of the most contested chapters in the history of psychiatric treatment.