Neurobiographies: writing lives in the history of neurology and the neurosciences

This essay surveys the present state of biographical writing in the history of neurology and neuroscience. Individual lives play a significant role in practitioner-historians' narratives, whereas academic historians tend to be more nonindividualistic and a-biographical. Autobiographies by neurologists and neuroscientists, and particularly autobiographical collections, are problematic as an historical genre. Neurobiographies proper are published with several aims in mind: some are written as literary entertainment, others as contributions to a cultural and social history of the neurosciences. Eulogy, panegyrics and commemoration play a great role in neurobiographical writing. Some biographies, finally, are written to provide role-models for young neuroscientists, thus reviving the classical, Plutarchian biographical tradition. Finally, a recent cooperative biography of Charcot is mentioned as an example of how the biographical genre can help overcome the alleged dichotomy between the historiographies of practitioner-historians and academic historians.