António Egas Moniz

António Egas Moniz was a Portuguese neurologist who built a dual career in medicine and politics, holding legislative and diplomatic posts in the Portuguese government while ascending to professor of neurology in Lisbon in 1911. He developed cerebral angiography, a breakthrough imaging technique, then turned his attention to psychosurgery and created leucotomy - the procedure that became known as lobotomy - as a treatment for mental illness. In 1949, he became the first Portuguese national to receive a Nobel Prize, sharing it with Walter Rudolf Hess for his work on leucotomy. He retired from his academic position in 1944 after decades of writing medical articles and teaching, leaving behind a legacy that would be fiercely reconsidered as the lobotomy fell from grace.