Francois Boller

Francois Boller, born in Montreux, Switzerland in 1938, is a French-American clinical professor of neurology in the Department of Neurology at George Washington University in Washington D.C. currently living and working in Paris, France as a co-series-editor of the Handbook of Clinical Neurology^[1](edited by Elsevier). He is the founder and former Director of the Alzheimer Disease Research Centre (ADRC)^[2] in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1993 he co-founded the European Journal of Neurology^[3] with Professor Per Soel Sorensen, the official journal of the European Academy of Neurology, which he co-edited until 2007.^[4]

In 2004 he received the Ottorino Rossi Award,^[5] for his valuable contribution to understanding hitherto hidden aspects of brain-behavior relationships and for his unrelenting activity as a teacher, editor, and promoter of international endeavors in the fields of neurology and neuropsychology. His career has led him to several countries; Italy, France, and the United States. Throughout his itinerary he succeeded in maintaining a very coherent approach to his research. Some of the topics he chose to investigate include focal brain damaged patients - particularly aphasia – diffuse brain damaged patients, cognitive impairment and aging people.

Boller was born from the union of Italian Erminia Martini, and French-Swiss musician Carlo Boller. He spent his first years in Montreux, before moving to Cremona, Italy at 14 years old. There he studied at the Liceo Classico Daniele Manin. After graduating he went to study in Bologna, at the Faculty of Medicine. In 1960 he moved to Pisa to continue his medical studies, where he also worked at the Institute of Physiology directed by Professor Giuseppe Moruzzi. After graduating from the University of Pisa in 1963 with an MD degree, he moved to Milan. There he worked at the Clinical Neurology Institute, under Professor Ennio De Renzi^[6] and completed his specialization in neurology.

In 1966 he joined the Department of Neurology of Boston University School of Medicine, under the direction of Professor Norman Geschwind. He completed his residency and obtained a fellowship there in 1970. In 1972 he left to work in the Department of Neurology of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland directed by Joseph Foley.^[7] In 1977 he spent a sabbatical year in Paris, where he worked at the INSERM Unit (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale), directed by Henry Hécaen. In 1979 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he was appointed Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. In parallel, he completed his PhD doctorate at the Case Western Reserve University Cleveland in 1982. In 1985 he founded the University of Pittsburgh's Alzheimer Disease Research Centre (ADRC).^[2]

In 1989 he moved to Paris as Research Director at Inserm. There, he founded a Research Unit dedicated to neurology and neuropsychology of cerebral aging, which he directed until 2005. In 2005 he returned to the United States, working first at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland) until 2013. Then he transferred to George Washington University, under the title of Clinical Professor of Neurology.^[8]

In 2017 he moved back to Paris, where he is currently working and living.