In Memoriam　 Alf Brodal, M.D. (1910-1988)

The Norwegian contribution to Neuroanatomy has been an extraordinarily rich one, providing as it has, a remarkable series of multi-talented individuals, including Fridtjof Nansen, Olaf Larsell, Jan Jansen, Alf Brodal, and Fred Walberg, to name only a few. Of them all, none left a greater impact on his field than Alf Brodal and with his death, February 29, 1988, Neuroscience can truly be said to have lost one of its giants. As a student and junior colleague of Jansen, and then as an active director of the Anatomical laboratories of the University of Oslo for almost 40 years, Brodal left an indelible impress through the papers and books that he published and the students who trained with him.

Alf was above all a dedicated neuroanatomist, concerned with both the overall plan and the finest detail of connections among neural centers. But he was also a behavioral neurologist in the fullest sense, always aware of the relation between circuitry and behavior, normal and abnormal. The former is epitomized by the vast number of studies which came from his laboratories from 1939 through the mid 1980s, detailing connections of brain stem nuclei, cerebellum, and the long ascending and descending tracts. The latter is exemplified by his series of classic textbooks on Neurological Anatomy in Relation to Clinical Medicine, his still quoted review of the hippocampus and the sense of smell (1947), and his unique anatamo-clinical evaluation of his own recovery from a cerebrovascular accident ("Self-observations and neuro-anatomical considerations after a stroke," 1973).

His career demonstrates a remarkable degree of focus on several basic issues, together with a continued readiness to change methodology as newer techniques offered greater insights and enhanced detail. His initial studies on olivary projections were based on the technique of secondary atrophy in newborn animals developed by Gudden in the late nineteenth century. These results were enhanced and extended through subsequent utilization of modifications of silver methods described by Bielschowsky, Glees, Nauta, and Fink and Heimer. With the advent of more modern tracing methods, including those of radioautography and horseradish peroxidase, his laboratory demonstrated its flexibility in retooling to use these increasingly powerful techniques. As a result the sequence of papers developed by him and his younger colleagues over the years provides a compressed history of neuroanatomy itself, marked by steadily increasing resolution of detail and enhanced sophistication in interpretation of results.

As already indicated, his textbook, “Neurological Anatomy in Relation to Clinical Medicine," which first appeared in its English version in 1948, went far beyond other texts of its time in relating structure to Neurology. Here was a book that was fun to read, and many of us, doing our initial stints as instructors in the early fifties, benefited from the attempted structuro-functional correlations which were so characteristic of the Brodal text. The third edition appearing in 1981 had grown enormously in size, reflecting the growth of the field it covered, and the enormous dedication of its author. Of similarly classic dimension are the books he published: "The Reticular Formation of the Brain Stem. Anatomical Aspects and Functional Correlations" (1957), “The Cranial Nerves, Anatomy and Anatomico-Clinical Correlations" (1965 2nd ed.), "Basic Aspects of Central Vestibular Mechanisms, Progress in Brain Research" (with O. Pompeiano, 1972), "Aspects of Cerebellar Anatomy" (with J. Jansen, 1954), and "The Vestibular Nuclei and their Connections, Anatomy, and Functional Correlations" (with O. Pompeiano and F. Walberg, 1962).

In addition to a group of gifted Norwegian scholars who worked with Brodal over the years, the constant flow of foreign colleagues and students through his laboratory attested to his reputation as a neuroanatomist and his engaging personal qualities. Among the latter were Angaut and Destombes, Courville, Kawamura, Pompeiano, Rexed, Rossi, M. and A. Scheibel, Szabo, and Szikla among others. The honors he received matched the eminence he achieved, with three honorary degrees (Uppsala, Paris, and Oxford) and his election to membership in the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Medicine (London), the Barany Society (Uppsala), the Sherrington Society (founding member), and the Academie Royale de Medecine de Belgique.

I first met Alf when he and his wife, Inger, visited Moruzzi's Neurophysiology Institute at Pisa where we were spending a fellowship year. A warm relationship developed immediately, capped by three strenuous shared days visiting Rome, and three rewarding months spent in the Brodal laboratory in Oslo the following autumn. In the thirty-four years that followed, we saw each other only a scant half dozen times. But I like to think that our shared affection was immune to time or distance. And whenever we were together, whether in California, Pisa, or Oslo, it was as if the last time were yesterday and the only things that had changed were the neural problems we discussed, or the family events we shared. I feel personally fortunate to have experienced Alf and Inger Brodal as friends, almost as family members over the years, and to have shared with them both Mila, and more recently, Marian. There are so many things to be said, many of which have no place here. Alf Brodal was a careful and dedicated scientist, a gentle but firm leader, and a family man. With his wife's death a few years before his own, he began to look more deeply into the most basic elements of human relationships. Always the questioner, always the rational doubter, he began to question elements in his own relationships over the years. As with his science, he tried to be dispassionate about himself, and I can say that even after his own scientific research had ceased, he continued in his quest for emotional growth until the end.

Arnold B. Scheibel

THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY 273: 1-2 (1988)