Award of the Peter Emil Becker Prize 2000 to Prof. Bengt Hagberg, Gothenburg

The Peter Emil Becker Prize was awarded for the third time on May 6, 2000, and this year's recipient was Professor Bengt Hagberg, Emeritus from the University of Gothenburg.

In 1998, when this prize was awarded for the first time, Professor Peter Emil Becker gave a memorable lecture about his research methods on diseases of genetic origin. In his lecture, Professor Becker made the distinction between “lumpers” and “splitters”, calling himself a “splitter”. Bengt Hagberg combines all the attributes of “lumpers” and “splitters” in one person. It is not only an honour for me to introduce this paediatrician and child neurologist but also a real personal pleasure.

Bengt Hagberg was born in Gothenburg on August 9, 1923. After attending school in Stockholm, he studied medicine in Uppsala. As a young man he was a well-known sprinter and member of the Swedish track and field national team. In Uppsala, he trained as a paediatrician and his first scientific work was focused on paediatric haematology with the support of Bo Vahlquist, his friend and teacher. His paper “Studies on the plasma transport of iron” was published as a supplement to the Acta Paediatrica Scandinavica in 1953 and led to an invitation to a meeting of the “Gesellschaft für Kinderheilkunde”, the German Paediatric Society in Bad Kissingen in the same year.

In the course of his studies, he noticed that the children with the most severe form of iron deficiency anaemia are predominantly found in institutions for the mentally handicapped. Thus, he recognized very early that children with neurological problems actually form the bulk of the daily work in children's hospitals. The number of such cases is about ten times the number of children with haematological diseases. Consequently, after expanding his knowledge in neurology and internal medicine, he concentrated his research and clinical work on the wide field of child neurology.

In 1969, Bengt Hagberg was appointed as the first professor for child neurology in all of Scandinavia at the University of Uppsala. In 1971, he went to Gothenburg as professor of paediatrics where he remained until his retirement.

During the sixties and early seventies, Professor Hagberg carried out research in cooperation with the biochemist Svennerholm and the neuropathologist Sourander on metabolic and degenerative diseases of the brain. These three men significantly broadened our knowledge of the clinical course and the neurochemical and neuropathological details of leukodystrophies and gangliosidoses and established the scientific basis for research in these fields. Bengt Hagberg and his collaborators described many diseases for the first time, including diseases of lipid metabolism, the congenital disequilibrium syndrome, and, more recently, the CDG syndrome, a group of disorders characterized by disorders of various transport proteins.

In the following years, Professor Hagberg worked on important detailed case studies as well as examining the frequency, distribution and causes of groups of similar diseases. His epidemiological studies on the frequency of various forms of cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus and mental retardation have formed the basis for prevention and rehabilitation worldwide.

Professor Hagberg continued to be interested in the wide field of mental retardation, one of the great unsolved problems in modern paediatrics. This led to his rediscovery of the Rett syndrome which had been previously described in 1966. Together with Down syndrome, this disease is the most frequent form of mental retardation in girls. In 1993, Professor Hagberg published the standard monograph on Rett syndrome. In 1966, he organized a world congress on Rett syndrome in Gothenburg, which took place under the patronage of Queen Silvia.

In 1973, Bengt Hagberg, in collaboration with the paediatricians Melchior from Copenhagen and McKeith from London initiated the first meeting of the European Federation of Child Neurology Societies, which in 1966 became the EPNS.

Professor Hagberg has received numerous national and international awards, for example, the Folke Bernadotte Prize in 1988, the Segawa Prize in Japan in 1989, the Hower Prize of the American Society of Child Neurology in 1993, the Rosen von Rosenstein Prize in Uppsala in 1994, the Cornelia de Lange Prize in the Netherlands in the same year and the Jacob Henle Medal in Göttingen in 1998.

This list of awards would give an incomplete picture if we were to neglect to mention Professor Hagberg's warm personal qualities, his professional competence and his understanding of and respect for sick and disabled children. Whoever has met Bengt Hagberg has been impressed by his never ending enthusiasm.

I am personally very pleased and honoured to present to the “Gesellschaft für Neuropädiatrie” the recipient of the Peter Emil Becker Prize 2000, my friend Prof. Bengt Hagberg.