Robert Naquet

Personal

Vocation

Family

French physician, a pioneer in clinical neurobiology and particularly of epilepsy mechanisms, and founder of the Laboratoire de Physiologie Nerveuse on the campus of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Gif-sur-Yvette in 1972. He alone discovered a seizure-prone strain of baboons from Senegal, and he discovered epilepsy in the chick with Nicole LeDouarin. His works include titles such as Hippocampal Lesions in Epilepsy: A Historical Review. Together with his mentor Henri Gastaut he organized the first international symposium on generalized epilepsy (in Marseille in September 1996 with results published in 1969). He also worked with Guiseppe Moruzzi and Horace Magoun. He married Michelle Maurois, daughter of André Maurois. She was a writer who published, among other works, a trilogy based on a multitude of family letters (L’encre dans le sang, Les cendres brûlantes and Déchirez cette lettre). He died on the evening of 7 December 2005, aged 82.