Alois Alzheimer

(1864 - 1915)

Born in Bavaria in 1864, Alois Alzheimer spent fourteen years working at Frankfurt’s mental asylum—often referred to as the Irrenschloss, “Castle of the Insane.” There he found Auguste Deter, suffering from what would become the first published case of Alzheimer’s disease. When she was admitted to the asylum, Deter was fifty-one years old; she died less than five years later, in 1906. Alzheimer received her brain to study afterward, and his discoveries led to his name becoming synonymous with what he found.