Gilbert C. van Wessem

Gilbert Cornelius van Wessem (* July 7, 1912 ; † May 19, 1983 ) was a Dutch-American chemist with outstanding commitment in the care of people with epilepsy .

life and work

Van Wessem was born and raised in the Netherlands. In 1945 he completed his chemistry studies with a doctorate. In 1946 he first moved to Suriname and a short time later to the USA, where he was naturalized in 1952. In 1953 he was transferred from his employer (the pharmaceutical company Warner Lambert; today Pfizer ) to the subsidiary in Germany and was in the 1950s and 1960s. Years including his own patents involved in the development of anti-epileptic drugs. Due to the epilepsy of his own daughter and dissatisfaction with the doctors initially treating him, he began to deal intensively with epilepsy. For this he took u. a. also contact with the US neurologist and epileptologist William Gordon Lennox and his colleagues, as well as in Germany a. a. with Rudolf Dreyer , Dieter Janz , Rudolf Wilhelm Meyer-Mickeleit and Gerhard Schorsch , whom he supported in the re-establishment of the German section of the International League Against Epilepsy (since 2004: German Society for Epileptology ). After another professional transfer to Italy, he contacted the epileptologist Raffaele Canger and organized a meeting to found an Italian lay organization for epilepsy. Various regional organizations were bundled under a national umbrella company in 1981 with him as the first president.

Awards

Awards passed u. a. 1975 as "Ambassador for Epilepsy" and 1982 with the "Social Accomplishment Award" from the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) and the International Bureau for Epilepsy (IBE) and 1979 through honorary membership of the German Section the ILAE, later also the Italian.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Castellano F. Gilbert C. van Wessem (people). Epilepsy International News 1982; No. 68: 14-15