Remembering in Alzheimer's disease: The “Bobs” at the turn of the new century

D m t y In today’s mad rush for breakthroughs and a strong focus n the future, one can safely assert that the past is a blur. It s ironic that in this field—one dedicated to the saving of emory—there is little or no time to reflect about how cientific discovery has evolved and influenced our undertanding of age-related neurodegenerative disorders. This letter pays tribute to two giants in the field of lzheimer’s disease, “the Bobs,” Robert Terry and Robert atzman. Their observations in the early 1970s and 1980s rought life to the concept that Alzheimer’s disease is a real isorder of epidemic proportions affecting more than 1 illion people in the United States alone. From coast to oast, first in NY at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine nd later at the University of California at San Diego UCSD), Terry and Katzman’s work provided the scientific asis stimulating both the public and federal interest in this evastating condition. The momentum generated by them nd others led, under the leadership of Dr. Zaven Khachaurian at the National Institutes of Aging, to the establishent of centers of excellence for Alzheimer’s disease reearch and to the expansion of funding to support the cientific efforts. Among their many seminal contributions are detailed escriptions of the ultrastructure of plaques and tangles, tudies of the role of neurotransmitter and neuronal loss in ementia, establishment of clinicopathologic guidelines for he diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, and epidemiologic tudies of dementia both in the United States and abroad. The Bobs observed that numerous plaques without tanles could be found in elderly people with dementia. A evere loss of neocortical neurons was detected in these atients. They also found that normal control individuals