Neurologists are familiar with Bavarian-born Alfons Maria Jakob (1884–1931), Professor of Neurol- ogy and Psychiatry at the Univer- sity of Hamburg, after whom Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease is named. Another Jakob, altogether unheeded in the English biomedi- cal literature, is the neuropathol- ogist Christfried (Christofredo) Jakob, 18 years senior to Alfons, also Bavarian-born, and consid- ered to be the father of Neurology in Argentina, his adopted home- land. Commanding an impressive background knowledge in philos- ophy, literary studies and classical music, Jakob dedicated his life to the study of unknown areas of comparative neurobiology with special emphasis on the natural history of the cerebral cortex, descriptive and pathological anat- omy and neuropathology [6], psychiatry, neuropsychology [7], neurophilosophy, embryology, zoology, botany, hydrobiology, palaeontology and geography. Christfried Jakob was born on 25 December 1866 in Wo ¨rnitzost- heim. He studied medicine at the University of Erlangen from 1886– 1890. For his thesis he studied aortitis syphilitica, under Fried- rich Albert von Zenker (1825– 1898). In the early 1890s he was assistant to Adolf von Stru ¨mpell (1853–1925) at Erlangen Medical Clinic and privately practised medicine in Bamberg [9, 10]. Jakob published his first book in 1895, an atlas of the normal and pathological anatomy of the ner- vous system [1], with lithographs and woodcuts made from original drawings and photographs, and cross-sections of the brain show- ing different layers with the aid of superimposed flaps. The book was duly translated into English, Rus- sian, French and Italian and went through a second edition in 1899. In 1897 Jakob published an atlas of methods of clinical investigation [2], an epitome of internal medi- cine, which was also translated into French and English. In 1899, through the mediation of Domingo Cabred (1859–1929), the Argentinian Professor of Psy- chiatry, Jakob went to Argentina to direct the Laboratory of the Psy- chiatric and Neurological Clinic of Hospicio de las Mercedes at the University of Buenos Aires [9, 10]. He was attracted by the prospect of collecting 300 brains per year for pathoanatomical study, as opposed to 2–3 brains he had access to in Germany. His three-year contract was later extended until 1910. For a dozen years, Jakob produced works in anatomy [4, 5, 8], neurology, psychopathology and anthropol- ogy [3]. Lazaros C. Triarhou Manuel del Cerro Christfried Jakob (1866–1956) Received: 20 March 2006 Received in revised form: 12 May 2006 Accepted: 28 May 2006 Prof. L.C. Triarhou, MD, PhD (&) Economo-Koskinas Wing for Integrative and Evolutionary Neuroscience Dept. of Educational and Social Policy University of Macedonia Egnatia 156, Bldg. Z-312 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece Tel.: +30-2310-891-387 Fax: +30-2310-891-388 E-Mail: triarhou@uom.gr Prof. M. del Cerro, MD Dept. of Neurobiology & Anatomy and Ophthalmology University of Rochester Rochester NY 14642, USA PIONEERS IN NEUROLOGY J Neurol (2007) 254:124–125 DOI 10.1007/s00415-006-0307-8 JON 2307