Neurol. praxi. 2026;27(4):321-326

Moravia's most famous neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and neuropathologist: Arnold Pick (1851-1924)

prof. MUDr. Petr Kaňovský, CSc., FEAN¹, prof. MUDr. Kateřina Menšíková, Ph.D., MBA,FEAN¹, MUDr. Lucie Tučková^{1, 2}, prof. MUDr. Radoslav Matěj, Ph.D.^{3, 4}

¹ Neurologická klinika a Centrum klinických neurověd, LF UP a FN, Olomouc

² Ústav klinické a molekulární patologie, LF UP a FN, Olomouc

³ Ústav patologie, 3. LF UK a FNKV, Praha

⁴ Ústav patologie a molekulární medicíny, 3. LF UK a FTN, Praha

Arnold Pick was born in 1851 into a merchant family in Velké Meziříčí, in the Moravian part of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. After completing secondary school in Jihlava, he studied at medical school in Vienna, where his teachers included Meynert, von Brücke, Rokitanský, Škoda, Billroth, von Heber, and other renowned physicians of the Vienna School. After graduation, he worked briefly at the Westphal Clinic in Berlin, and spent two years as a staff physician at the mental health facility in Wehnen. In 1877, he moved to a German psychiatric clinic in Prague, which was located in buildings in Kateřinská Street. In 1880, he was offered a position at a newly opened mental hospital in Dobřany, near Pilsen. Pick worked there for six years, four of which as director. In 1866, he was appointed full professor of neuropathology and returned to Prague, where he took over the German neuropsychiatric clinic. During his tenure, he transformed the "traditional" institute into a modern clinic with expertise reaching into clinical neurology, pathology (particularly neuropathology), and later psychology and psychotherapy. However, his main interest was clinical neurology, particularly focusing on patients with disorders of symbolic functions. In 1892, he published a case report of a patient who had developed a disease that, thirty years later, would be named after Pick; today, the term "Pick's disease" is used as an umbrella term for all phenotypes of frontotemporal dementia. Pick ran the clinic for thirty-five years, until 1921, when he retired. He died in 1924 of sepsis after urological surgery and is buried at the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague.

Keywords: Arnold Pick, history, Pick's disease, frontotemporal dementia.

Received: April 10, 2026; Accepted: April 28, 2026; Prepublished online: April 28, 2026; Published: October 2, 2026  Show citation