The disease we now call Alzheimer’s was first described and discovered by the German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in the early 1900s.

Quick Scoop: Who discovered Alzheimer’s?

  • In 1901, Alois Alzheimer began treating a 51‑year‑old woman named Auguste Deter who had severe memory loss, confusion, and personality changes.
  • After she died in 1906, he examined her brain and found abnormal “plaques and tangles” — what we now know as beta‑amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
  • These findings led him to describe a new kind of “presenile dementia,” which his mentor Emil Kraepelin later named “Alzheimer’s disease” in his psychiatric textbook.

So if you’re wondering “who discovered Alzheimer’s?”, the credit goes to Dr. Alois Alzheimer, whose careful observation of one patient changed how the world understands dementia.

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