Max Rothmann was a German neuroanatomist and physiologist who was a native of Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

.

Biography

He was born on April 26, 1868 in Berlin. His father Oskar Rothmann (1834-1915) was the physician and "Sanitätsrat".

He studied medicine in Berlin and Freiburg

Freiburg

Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...

. In 1889 he earned his medical doctorate at Berlin. In 1891 he worked in Carl Weigert's laboratory, then he was an assistant to Albert Fraenkel

Albert Fraenkel

Albert Fraenkel was a German physician who helped establish Streptococcus pneumoniae as a cause of bacterial pneumonia and championed intravenous ouabain for use in heart failure...

 in Krankenhaus am Urban.

Rothmann was the catalyst concerning the establishment of an anthropological

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 research station in the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

, which was subsequently founded at Orotava

Orotava Valley

The greenish and fruitful Orotava Valley is a beautiful valley filled with gullies and cliffs located in the northern part of the Canary island of Tenerife, in Spain. The valley is 10 by 11 km....

, Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

 in 1913 with Eugen Teuber (1889-1958) as its first director. In 1914 Rothmann became director of Neurologisches Centralblatt.

In August, 1915, at the age of 47, Rothmann committed suicide. He was buried in Jüdischer Friedhof Schönhauser Allee, Berlin-Pankow. Obituaries were written by Louis Jacobsohn-Lask

Louis Jacobsohn-Lask

Louis Jacobsohn-Lask was a German neurologist and neuroanatomist. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin under Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer, Rudolf Virchow, Emil du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Viktor von Leyden and Robert Koch...

 (1863-1940), Hermann Oppenheim

Hermann Oppenheim

Hermann Oppenheim was one of the leading neurologists in Germany. He studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Bonn. He started his career at the Charité-Hospital in Berlin as an assistant of Karl Westphal...

, Hugo Liepmann

Hugo Liepmann

Hugo Karl Liepmann was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who was a native of Berlin. From 1895 to 1899 he was an assistant to Carl Wernicke in Breslau, and in 1901 received his habilitation at the Charité-Berlin...

 and Smith Ely Jelliffe

Smith Ely Jelliffe

Smith Ely Jelliffe . American neurologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst who lived and practiced in New York City nearly his entire life. Originally trained in botany and pharmacy, Jelliffe switched first to neurology in the mid-1890s then to psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, and ultimately to...

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Family

Max Rothmann was married to Anna Neumann (1871–1936); they had at least four children. Elder son Otto (1896–1914) was killed in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Hans (1899–1970) studied medicine and continued some of neuroanatomical works of his father; he emigrated to USA. Daughter Eva Rothmann (1897–1960) was psychologist and married Kurt Goldstein

Kurt Goldstein

Kurt Goldstein was a German Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist who was a pioneer in modern neuropsychology. He created a holistic theory of the organism based on Gestalt theory which deeply influenced the development of Gestalt therapy...

. The second daughter was Grete Rothmann-Arons.

Legacy

His name is lent to "Rothmann-Makai panniculitis

Panniculitis

Panniculitis is a group of diseases whose hallmark is inflammation of subcutaneous adipose tissue...

", which is a disease named along with Hungarian surgeon

Surgeon

In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...

 Endre Makai (1884-1972). This disorder is sometimes referred to as lipogranulomatosis subcutanea, and is a rare variant of Weber-Christian disease.