Hans Berger was a professor of psychiatry and director of the Jena Psychiatric University Clinic from 1919 until his forced retirement in 1938. But it is his research into the correlation of brain activity and consciousness for which he is remembered. This research led him by a long and frustrating path to the discovery of the electroencephalogram (EEG) of man. The EEG is a graphic representation of electrical waves measured repeatedly between two points of the skull, and though Berger himself did not develop its full potential as a diagnostic tool, the EEG has since come to be invaluable in diagnosing and treating such neurological disorders as epilepsy and brain tumors.

Born on May 21, 1873 in the small northern Bavarian town of Neuses near Coburg, Germany, Berger was the son of Paul Friedrich Berger, a physician, and of Anna Rückert, daughter of a German poet who was well known...