1874-1955

Portuguese physician, neurologist, and politician whose introduction of prefrontal lobotomy as psychosurgery in 1936 won him the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1949. Of more lasting value was his work in neuroradiology, diagnostic techniques that allow doctors to see into the living brain. Around 1926 he invented cerebral angiography. This involved inserting an opaque contrast medium such as thorium dioxide into both carotid arteries, then using x rays to find brain tumors and other lesions.