Oskar Vogt

Oskar Vogt (April 6, 1870–July 30, 1959 in Freiburg im Breisgau) was a German physician and neurologist. He was born in Husum - Schleswig-Holstein. Vogt studied medicine at Kiel and Jena, obtaining his doctorate from Jena in 1894.

Vogt was married to the French neurologist Cécile Vogt-Mugnier, whom he met in Paris while he was there working with Joseph Jules Dejerine and his wife, Augusta Marie Dejerine-Klumke (who collaborated with him). The Vogt couple also collaborated for a long period, usually with Cécile as the primary author.

Oskar founded an Institut für Hirnforschung (Institute for Brain research) in Berlin, Germany. There, he had students from many countries who went on to prominent careers including Korbinian Brodmann and Brockhaus.

As a clinician, Vogt used hypnotism (Stuckrade-Barre and Danek 2004) until 1903 and wrote papers on the topic. In particular, Vogt had an intense interest for localizing psychology.

Vogt has been misrepresented as having accepted the Nazis. It is true that he was the personal practitioner of the Krupp family (cannon manufacturer in the Ruhr Area, Essen). Fritz Krupp supported him financially particularly when the Vogts, driven away by the Nazis (1937), had to move to Neustadt (Black Forest) and founded a new institute. In fact, Vogt was a socialist, involved with the factions led by Mme Fessard who knew him personally, and with the guesdist element of the French socialist party (Jules Guesde was at the far left wing of this party). He had never been a Communist, although he did interact with the Soviets on a number of occasions. They sent him several researchers, including N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij (whom Solzhenitsyn met in the Gulag). He helped to establish the brain institute in Moscow.

The Vogts had two daughters, both accomplished scientists in their own rights. Marthe Vogt (1903–2003) was a neuropharmacologist who became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Professor at Cambridge. Marguerite Vogt (1913–2007) started as a developmental geneticist working in Drosophila, then moved to the US in 1950. She developed methods to culture poliovirus with Renato Dulbecco. She was a faculty member at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies where she worked on viral transformation and cellular immortalization of cancer cells.