Frederic A. Gibbs

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Frederic Andrews Gibbs (born February 9, 1903 , † October 18, 1992 in Northbrook , Illinois ) was an American neurologist , known as the pioneer of the use of EEGs in epilepsy .

Life

Gibbs studied at Yale University and Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, graduating in 1929. He was then a fellow in neuropathology with Stanley Cobb (1887–1968) at Harvard Medical School , located at Boston City Hospital . William G. Lennox and Erna Leonhardt (1904–1987) of German descent also worked there in epilepsy research. Gibbs married Leonhardt in 1930 and later worked closely with her. In 1935, on a visit to Europe in Germany, he visited Hans Berger , the father of the EEG, and the electrical engineer Jan Friedrich Tönnies , who had built an EEG device for the animal experiments of the neurophysiologist Alois E. Kornmüller (1905–1968) and got ideas there for own development. In the same year, he had a three-channel EEG built by MIT graduate Albert Grass (1910–1992).

From 1937 to 1944 Gibbs was an instructor, from 1944 to 1951 Associate Professor of Psychiatry and from 1952 to 1975 (retired) Professor of Neurology and Neurophysiology with a focus on EEG and head of the epilepsy outpatient clinic he founded at the University of Illinois School of Medicine in Chicago .

He was one of the first to associate EEG patterns with certain neuronal injuries in the brain, making them a diagnostic tool. Among other things, Gibbs published an important work on the EEG in epilepsy as early as 1935 together with the US neurologist and epileptologist William Gordon Lennox . He also refuted some theories about epilepsy that were still widespread in the 1930s (for example, it was often assumed at the time that the cause was spasms of blood vessels in the brain).

Gibbs was u. a. 1936 first secretary of the US-American League against Epilepsy (= predecessor organization of the US-American Epilepsy Society or American Epilepsy Society; AES), from 1948 to 1949 president of the AES and 1949–53 one of the two vice-presidents of the International League against Epilepsy (ILAE) .

With his wife he founded the American EEG Society , the Brain Research Foundation, and the American Medical EEG Association . In 1951 he received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award . He was a three-time honorary doctor.

Fonts

Gibbs published a. a. for the first time in 1941 an initially one-volume and later four-volume EEG atlas, which in some cases saw several editions (1950–1964). Among other things, in the second volume from 1952 devoted to epilepsy, “ hypsarrhythmia ” was first described as a typical EEG pattern.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Find a Grave
  2. ↑ Zottoli SJ .: The origins of the Grass Foundation. In: Biol Bull . tape 201 , 2001, pp. 218-226 .
  3. ^ Hughes JR, Penney DW, Stone JL .: History of the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois. In: Clin Electroencephalogr . tape 25 , 1994, pp. 99-103 .
  4. ↑ Gibbs FA, Davis H, Lennox WG .: The electroencephalogram in epilepsy and in conditions of impaired consciousness. In: Arch Neurol Psychiatry . tape 34 , 1935, pp. 1133-1148 .
  5. ^ Gibbs FA, Gibbs EL .: Atlas of Electroencephalography. LA Cummings Printing Co., Cambridge, Massachusetts 1941.
  6. ^ Gibbs FA, Gibbs EL .: Atlas of Electroencephalography, Vol 2. Epilepsy. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, USA, and London UK 1952.
personal data
SURNAME Gibbs, Frederic A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gibbs, Frederic Andrews (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1903
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1992
Place of death Northbrook , Illinois