Georg N. Koskinas

Who was Georg N. Koskinas?

Georg N. Koskinas was a Greek neurologist-psychiatrist. He was born on December 1, 1885 in Geraki, near Sparta. He studied medicine at the University of Athens, graduating in 1910, and subsequently trained as a resident in the Clinic of Psychiatry and Neurology of Aiginiteion Hospital under Michel Catsaras, a student of Jean-Martin Charcot. Between 1916 and 1927 he worked at the University of Vienna in neuropathology and neuroanatomy. At the Neurological Institute, his mentors in neuropathology were Heinrich Obersteiner and Otto Marburg. In 1925 Koskinas published, with neurologist Constantin von Economo, the monumental Cytoarchitektonik der Hirnrinde des erwachsenen Menschen. His collaboration with neuropathologist Ernst Sträussler in the Psychiatric Clinic headed by Julius Wagner-Jauregg lead to several histopathological publications related to the malaria therapy of dementia paralytica or general paresis of the insane, a complication of tertiary syphilis. Following his repatriation to Greece in 1927, he founded private clinics and practised psychiatry and neurology in Kifissia, a northern Athenian suburb. Georg N. Koskinas died on July 8, 1975 in Athens at the age of 89.