The Johann Jacob Wepfer Award 2012 of the European Stroke Conference to Professor Louis R. Caplan

junior resident in medicine at the Boston City Hospital under the guidance of Professor Derek Denny-Brown (1901– 1981), and he completed his neurology residency at the Harvard Neurological Unit at the same hospital in 1969. From 1969 to 1970, he was a Cerebrovascular Disease Fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the golden era of Raymond Adams (1911–2008) and Charles Miller-Fisher (1913– 2012). Caplan joined the Department of Neurology at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital in 1970, and he moved to Chicago in 1978 to become neurologist-in-chief at the Michael Reese Hospital and Professor of Neurology at the University of Chicago. In 1984, he returned to New England to become chairman of the Department of Neurology at the New England Medical Center and a professor at Tufts Medical School. In 1998, he returned to the Beth Israel Hospital, that is today part of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). He is still active there as a senior neurologist and is Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School. Professor Charles Miller-Fisher was probably his most influential teacher. If Caplan’s interest in general neurology and stroke medicine had not already been kindled by Denny-Brown, Miller-Fisher did it definitely. As an astute observer of clinical manifestations and anatomy, a skillful researcher and talented teacher, Louis Caplan is the author of more than 600 original articles and reviews. He has also written or edited 35 books. He often starts on an historical note, illustrating the development of wisdom in a given field to build on the scientific foundations of our ancestors and teachers. This demonstrates his love for history, which he first proved when, as a premed student at Williams College, he majored in history and received the Williams College history prize. Louis Caplan has served on numerous committees and editorial boards. He is a former chairman of the Stroke Council of the American Heart AssoJohann Jacob Wepfer [1]