Economo

Constantin von Economo (August 21 1876  - October 21 1931), one of the foremost brain scientists of the twentieth century, was born in Brăila, Romania, to Greek parents. He grew up in Trieste, where he received his primary and secondary education, and then moved to Vienna. He studied engineering and medicine, becoming assistant of neurology and psychiatry (1906), lecturer (1913) and professor (1921) at the University of Vienna. On April 17, 1917 he made the seminal description of epidemic encephalitis lethargica (since known as 'von Economo disease') at the Viennese Society for Psychiatry and Neurology. In 1918 he postulated the existence of an active sleep-regulating center in the brain and subsequently localized it with precision, based on clinical and pathoanatomical observations. In 1925 he published, with neurologist Georg N. Koskinas (1885-1975), the monumental Cytoarchitektonik der Hirnrinde des erwachsenen Menschen (Cytoarchitectonics of the Adult Human Cerebral Cortex ). Von Economo died in 1931 in Vienna at the age of 55.