Manuel Velasco Suárez

Manuel Velasco Suárez (1914 to 2001) was a Mexican neurologist and neurosurgeon who also became a politician. Born in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, he founded and was the first director of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico, the institute that now bears his name, and he remained its director emeritus and an honorary member of its governing board until his death. At the National Autonomous University of Mexico he created the chair of neurology and neurosurgery and taught for more than sixty years, and the university named him emeritus professor in 1989. The article also credits him with promoting the closure of inhumane asylums, introducing neuropsychiatry, developing services for mentally ill patients at the Hospital Juárez de México, taking part in founding Mexico's National Bioethics Commission, and acting as the Hispanic American leader of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He served as governor of Chiapas from 1970 to 1976 for the Institutional Revolutionary Party.