Life of Alois Alzheimer

Alois Alzheimer

Childhood and Education

Alois Alzheimer was born to Eduard Alzheimer, Notary Public, and his second wife Theresia in Marktbreit, at what is now OchsenfurterStraße 15a, on 14 June 1864.

Alois Alzheimer lived in Marktbreit for the first ten years of his life before being sent to Aschaffenburg in 1874, to continue his education there.

Alois Alzheimer later studied in Berlin, Tübingen and Würzburg, where, in 1888, he completed his doctoral thesis "On the Earwax Glands". Following his doctoral thesis, Alois Alzheimer expanded his knowledge of microscopic examination methods at the Anatomical Institute in Würzburg.

Alzheimers doctoral thesis on the Earwax Glands

Professional Career

In 1888 Alois Alzheimer took up a position as an Assistant Doctor at the "Municipal Asylum for the Insane and Epileptic" in Frankfurt am Main. It was here, in 1901, that he met Auguste Deter, the patient in whom he first described the symptoms of disease that would later bear his name.

Patient file on Auguste Deter

Two years later, Alois Alzheimer left Frankfurt and moved via Heidelberg to Munich, where he joined the Royal Psychiatric Clinic under the directorship of renowned psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Under Alois Alzheimer’s direction, the Munich laboratory was transformed into an important research center, attracting many well-known researchers and physicians.

In 1912, Alois Alzheimer assumed the directorship of the Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic at the University of Silesia in Wrocław. He passed away from kidney failure on 19 December 1915, and was laid to rest in the main cemetery in Frankfurt am Main.

Alois Alzheimer was married to Cecilie Simonette Nathalie Geisenheimer, née Wallerstein (1860–1901). The marriage produced three children.