Egas Moniz, Ant�nio Caetano de Abreu Freire 1874-1955
Portuguese neurosurgeon and Nobel Prize winner

He was born in Avanca. Professor of Neurology at Coimbra (from 1902) and Lisbon (1911-44), he did important work on the use of dyes in the X-ray localization of brain tumours and developed prefrontal lobotomy for the control of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. In 1949 he shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Walter Hess. The early promise which lobotomy seemed to some to show was not substantiated and the operation, which frequently produces serious long-term side-effects, has fallen into disrepute. Egas Moniz also had a successful political career, as a deputy in the Portuguese parliament (1903-17), Foreign Minister (1918), and the leader of the Portuguese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.