Josef Gerstmann

Who was Josef Gerstmann?

Josef Gerstmann was an Austrian neurologist.

Gerstmann studied Medicine at the Medical University in Vienna between 1906 and 1912 graduating in 1912. During WWI he served with distinction as the sanitary officer. Subsequently he worked at the Clinic for Psychiatry-Neurology in Vienna with Wagner-Jauregg, and, after becoming Professor, he became the chief of Neurological Institute Maria-Theresien-Schlössel, Vienna in 1930. Being Jewish, he emigrated with his wife Martha to the United States in 1938, escaping the Nazi Anschluss.

Initially Gerstmann worked at the Springfield / Ohio State Hospital, and from 1940 to 1941 as a research assistant and as a consultant neurologist at St. Elisabeth Hospital in Washington. 1941 he moved to New York and become a research associate at the New York Neurological Institute and an attending neuropsychiatrist at Goldwater Memorial Hospital. Gerstmann opened a private practise at 240 Central Park South. He was named an honorary member of the American Psychiatric Association and Academy of Neurology, a member of the American Psychopathological Association, Psychotherapeutic Society, Pirquet Society and the Rudolf Virchow Society.