Forbes: Paul Broca's Great Discovery Also Reminds Us That Scientists Are Fallible
- #news
- #headline

Figure timeline
Paul Pierre Broca was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involved with language. His work revealed that the brains of patients with aphasia contained lesions in a particular part of the cortex, in the left frontal region. This was the first anatomical proof of loc…
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
science · French physician, anatomist and anthropologist (1824–1880) · physician · anatomist · anthropologist · neurologist · biologist · politician · surgeon · also Paul Broca, Pierre Paul Broca, Broca
Born 28 June 1824 · Died 9 July 1880 · Q311276
30 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
7 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
Forbes: Paul Broca's Great Discovery Also Reminds Us That Scientists Are Fallible
Died 1880-07-09.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Officer of the Legion of Honour (1879).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awarded Knight of the Legion of Honour (1876).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Organized a campaign to stop the teaching of the subject in the Anthropological Institute
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Founded the journal Revue d'anthropologie, and in 1876, the Institute of Anthropology
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Charles Darwin criticized Broca for believing in the existence of a tailless mutant of the Ceylon junglefowl, described in 1807 by the Dutch aristocrat, zoologist and museum director Coenraad Jacob Temminck
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Was elected a member of the Académie de medicine, and appointed the chair of clinical surgery
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And one year later professor of clinical surgery
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
After the discovery of a chinless and protruded Neanderthal jaw, he wrote: "I have already had occasion to state that I am not a Darwinist
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Became the president of the Societe de Chirurgie (Surgery)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
In the Bulletin of the Société Anatomique
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca published On the Phenomenon of Hybridity two years after Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca visited a patient in the Bicêtre Hospital named Louis Victor Leborgne, who had a 21-year progressive loss of speech and paralysis but not a loss of comprehension nor mental function
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Founded the Society of Anthropology of Paris
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca was elected as member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca presented these findings on leporids to the Société de Biologie
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Feeling pressured by others and especially his mother, Broca married Adele Augustine Lugol
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca contributed to Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard's work on the nervous system, conducting vivisection experiments, where specific spinal nerves were cut to demonstrate the spinal pathways for sensory and motor systems
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca was presented with a hybrid leporid, a result of a cross species reproduction between a rabbit and hare
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca published On Aneurysms and their Treatment, a detailed, almost a thousand page long review of all accessible records on diagnosis and surgical and non treatment for these weakened blood vessels conditions
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca became professor agrégé, and was appointed surgeon of the hospital
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca joined the Société de Biologie
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Broca became the Prosector, performing dissections for lectures of anatomy, at the University of Paris Medical School
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Bouillaud relied on his work with patients with brain damage to challenge other professionals to disprove him by finding a case of frontal lobe damage unaccompanied by a disorder of speech
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
A society of free-thinkers, sympathetic to Charles Darwin's theories
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Became an intern with Pierre Nicolas Gerdy (1797–1856), a great anatomist and surgeon
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
With the psychiatrist François Leuret (1797–1851) at the Bicêtre Hospital
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born 1824-06-28.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Connections