Eugène Apert

Who was Eugène Apert?

Eugène Charles Apert was a French pediatrician born in Paris.

He received his doctorate in 1897 and afterwards was associated with the Hôtel-Dieu and Hôpital Saint-Louis. From 1919 until 1934, he worked at the Hôpital des Enfants-Malades in Paris. Pediatrician Jacques-Joseph Grancher and surgeon Paul Georges Dieulafoy were important influences to his career. He was also a student of pediatrician Antoine Bernard-Jean Marfan and collaborated with dermatologist François Henri Hallopeau.

Apert's medical research primarily dealt with genetic diseases and congenital abnormalities. In 1906 he published a case report, titled De l'acrocéphalosyndactylie, documenting several individuals who had congenital malformations of the skull in conjunction with joined fingers. The condition came to be known as "Apert syndrome", a syndrome consisting of a triad of disorders, namely craniosynostosis, syndactyly and maxillary underdevelopment.

Apert was the author of many works in the field of pediatrics, including an influential manual on child rearing. He was a founding member of the French Society of Eugenics.