Jean Talairach
Jean Talairach (born January 15, 1911 in Perpignan , † March 15, 2007 in Paris ) was a French neurosurgeon and brain researcher.
Life
For Talairach, the son of a pianist, a musical career initially seemed to be emerging. His mother let him learn to play the cello at a professional level. Then he developed his passion for geometry and architecture and became interested in the lecture halls of the medieval medical college in Montpellier . This in turn sparked his interest in medicine, especially psychiatry. In 1938 he went to Paris to study medicine.
At the Hôpital Sainte-Anne , one of the most renowned and oldest hospitals in France, which was founded in the 13th century, he received his doctorate with a thesis on female psychoses . During the German occupation he joined the Resistance . For the Allies he made a detailed plan of the underground tunnels in Paris. In 1944 he was accepted into the Légion d'Honneur .
An encounter with Marcel David , the head of the neurosurgical department of the Hôpital Sainte-Anne, founded in 1939, was decisive for his professional career . At his institute he devised the fundamentals of procedures that would later become known as stereotaxic . These allow functional areas of the brain to be localized with great precision . At a time when imaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging were not yet available and X-rays only provided an imprecise reproduction of the brain, he created an accurate mapping of the human brain named after him.
His work was the basis for brain anatomical atlases, which were also relevant after his death. The data developed by him and his team mates Pierre Tournoux , Gabor Szikla and Jean Bancaud provided the basis for the imaging software that enables neurosurgical operations to work with precise knowledge of the treatment goal and the surgical tool . This enables neurosurgical treatments of brain tumors, epilepsy or certain movement abnormalities, for example.
To fix the head during treatment, he invented the Talairach frame ( cadre de Talairach ) named after him in 1947 , although he did not apply for a patent.
His work contributed to a large extent to the reputation of the Hôpital Sainte-Anne. His death coincided with the publication of his last work, which deals with the history of the Institute of Neurosurgery at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne. He died in the same room in the Hôpital Sainte-Anne that had once been his study.
Fonts
- Bertrand Devaux, Jean Talairach: Souvenirs des études stéréotaxiques du cerveau humain: Une vie, une équipe, une méthodologie: L'Ecole de Sainte-Anne , Éditions John Libbey Eurotext, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-7420-0653-3
- Jean Talairach, Pierre Tournoux: Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain . Thieme , Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-13-711701-1 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Jean Talairach in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
- Jean-Yves Nau: Obituary for Jean Talairach (French, fee required), Le Monde , March 20, 2007
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Talairach, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French neurosurgeon and brain researcher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 15, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Perpignan |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 15, 2007 |
| Place of death | Paris |