A Tribute to a Neuropathologist, Robert D. Terry

o i S c k t C s s o K t One of the major influences Robert D. (Bob) Terry had n my career, and those of his other trainees, would have to e his advocacy of neuropathology as a distinct medical pecialty that focuses on understanding all facets of a neuologic disorder. The neuropathologist should be an interediary between the neurologist and the neuroscientist as ell as a medical professional that is as fluent in the lanuage of the clinic as that of the basic science research aboratory. This view of neuropathology no doubt stemmed rom his close interaction with an influential neurologist, aul R. Korey. So great was Dr. Korey’s influence on Bob hat when he was awarded the Potamkin prize for research n Alzheimer’s disease, Bob devoted part of the monetary ward to establish an endowment with the American Assoiation of Neuropathologists to provide an annual award to neuropathologist who “did it all”: one who combined xcellence in not only clinical service and education but lso research. Saul Korey, the first chairman of the Department of eurology of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the ronx [1], established a paradigm for neurologic investigaion that was ahead of its time in its emphasis on a multiisciplinary approach that brought together neurologists, europathologists, and neurochemists in the investigation of clinically meaningful and potentially tractable problem. It as decades later that multidisciplinary studies became the antra at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The first uccess of this investigational method was the elucidation of he structural and chemical basis of lysosomal storage disases, including Tay Sachs disease, in which Bob Terry rought to the team his skills and interpretative abilities in nnovative structural studies of the nervous system employng the new tool of electron microscopy. It was not long hereafter that Bob Katzman had the insight to realize the mportance of Alzheimer’s disease and the possibility that a