Fritz Heinrich Lewy, who first described the inclusion bodies in paralysis agitans, was born in Berlin in 1885, the son of a Jewish physician. He studied medicine in Berlin and Zurich and worked with von Monakow in 1905 at the International Brain Institute in Zurich. During 1907 and 1908 he was probably connected with the Institute of Physiology in Berlin, and from 1908 to 1910 with the Experimental Department of the Institute of Physiology at Breslau University. In 1910 he obtained his medical degree in Berlin and graduated from the Universities of Berlin and Zurich. It was during this time that he began his morphological study of Parkinson’s disease. From 1910 to 1912 he worked in histopathology and physiology at the Neuropsychiatric Laboratory in Munich with Emil Kraepelin, Alois Alzheimer, Franz Nissl and Walter Spielmeyer. From 1912 to 1914 he was the director of the Neuropsychiatric Laboratory at the Medical School of Breslau University, under Alois Alzheimer. During the First World War, from 1917 to 1919, he served as a military medical officer in Turkey. In 1919 he took up a position as a neurologist at the 2nd Medical Clinic of Charité Hospital in Berlin. Lewy became a private lecturer (‘Privatdozent’) in 1921, progressing to the position of Professor of Neurology and Internal Medicine in 1923. Seven years of work developing the Neurological Research Institute and Clinic in Berlin were crowned when Lewy was appointed as its director in 1932. Unfortunately, his tenure was short-lived because the Nazi regime dismissed him on 1 July 1933 on racial grounds [1].

In the summer of 1933, Lewy arrived in London, where he tried to continue his studies in neurology, neurophysiology and neuropathology. Eventually, he was awarded a grant from the Academic Assistance Council for research into possible toxicity in lead workers. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States with his wife Flora and his mother. His emigration was probably facilitated by the American Quakers [9]. His initial position was as Rockefeller Fellow in Neurosurgery (under Frazier) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Between 1943 and 1946 he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army and a consultant in neurology to the Surgeon General. He had changed his first two names, Fritz Heinrich, to Frederic Henry during the years 1938 to 1939 and his surname Lewy into Lewey during his naturalization process in 1940 [9]. Lewey died suddenly on the 5 October 1950 at the age of 65, at his summer home in Pennsylvania; both he and his wife are buried in Haverford, Pennsylvania. In his first publications on para-