Oskar Vogt

Oskar Vogt (Husum, 1870 - Freiburg im Breisgau, 1959) was a German neurologist who trained in medicine at Kiel and Jena, where he earned his doctorate in 1894. Together with his wife, the French neurologist Cécile Vogt-Mugnier, he became a central figure in the anatomical study of the brain in the twentieth century. He is sometimes also described as a physicist, but his name is chiefly linked to brain research.

In Berlin, in 1898, the couple founded the Neurologische Zentralstation, which in time grew into the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, where Vogt served as director. Their cytoarchitectonic studies of the cortex proposed a six-layer pattern and distinguished iso- from allocortex. They also worked on the thalamus and the striatum. Vogt was additionally an entomologist, with a particular interest in bumblebees. He was dismissed from his post in 1936, having opposed the Nazi regime.

His interest in locating the origins of talent in the brain led him to examine Lenin's brain after the leader's death, where he found unusually large pyramidal cells, which he read as a sign of superior capacity. In 1925 he accepted an invitation from Moscow to set up a brain research institute. His influence reached students such as Korbinian Brodmann and Rafael Lorente de Nó, and the institute he helped build gave rise in 1945 to the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.