Paul Broca

A medical prodigy who earned his diploma from the University of Paris at age twenty, Broca became surgeon at the Bicêtre Hospital. In 1861, he examined Louis Victor Leborgne ('Tan'), a patient who had lost all capacity for articulate speech for twenty-one years except for the single syllable 'tan'.

Post-mortem dissection revealed a circumscribed lesion in the third convolution of the left frontal lobe, establishing for the first time in medical history that specific cognitive functions are localized in anatomically distinct brain regions ('Broca's area' and 'Broca's aphasia'). He also founded the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1859.