Remembering Joseph Roger, 1918–2012

Photo 1. Dr. Roger at the first international workshop, Marseille, 1983. Joseph Roger passed away on September 3, 2012. He was a great man, a ‘‘giant’’ as one epileptologist has written, with a remarkable personality. It is with a great sense of loss that I pay tribute to him here. Born in 1918, he entered medical school in Marseille in 1941 but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War. He became involved in the’’ Resistance’’ and received several prestigious decorations for his military actions. He decided against the politic career he could have pursued at this point, and went back to medical school instead, graduating from the University of Marseille in 1948. He went on to specialize in neuropsychiatry. Soon, he became interested in epilepsy in all its aspects: clinical, neurophysiological, pharmacological, psychopathological and social. His interest focussed particularly on in two main topics: progressive myoclonus epilepsies, with Lafora disease and Unverricht-Lundborg disease, and seizure and epilepsy classification. In 1968, he reported on Myoclonic cerebellar dyssynergia, the so-called Ramsay-Hunt disease, at the French Neurology Society meeting. At the time, great confusion reigned in this domain. In the following years, there were numerous discussions with the Montreal and the Finnish schools, which finally clarified the field at an international workshop in Marseille, where the Marseille Consensus was written, in 1990. Joseph Roger was also a key international promoter of the concept of epileptic syndromes. As Chair of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Commission on Classification and Terminology of the International League Against Epilepsy, he organized several international workshops at Marseille, which eventually helped to produce the new ILAE 1989 classification of epilepsies, and were the basis of the ‘Guide Bleu’’ of the epileptic syndromes. This book was published in French and English, with an illustrative DVD, and translated in Japanese and Chinese. The fifth edition was published last year (Photo 1). Joseph Roger was also keen to improve the social aspects of epilepsy and epilepsy care. In 1960, in collaboration with Henri Gastaut, Anne Beaumanoir and Germaine Poinso-Chapuis, Ministry of Public Health, he created the Centre Saint-Paul, for the diagnosis, treatment and education of children and adolescents with epilepsy, and then became its Medical Director for thirty years. He helped to establish this centre as a focus of epileptological teaching and clinical research known and admired all around the world. Joseph Roger was the head of the school, recognized and loved by all. He did not impose his will on anyone but pushed his collaborators forward by listening to them, making suggestions and exercising his moral authority without ever being ‘‘coercive’’. He taught many young doctors from France and other countries, mainly from Italy and Spain. They were charmed by his intelligence, his curiosity, his fabulous memory, his rigour in