Background
Jacques Brotchi was born in Liège. After the war, Jacques grew up in Esneux where his parents were dentists.
neurosurgeon politician senator university professor
Jacques Brotchi was born in Liège. After the war, Jacques grew up in Esneux where his parents were dentists.
He studied at the Atheneum in Liège. He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Liège in 1967. He received his Doctor of Philosophy for his study of the histochemistry of focal epilepsies.
As a Jewish family, they escaped deportation to the concentration camps by being hidden by a Belgian family in Comblain-au-Pont. His chief interest was neurosurgery, which led him to work (already as a student) at the Laboratory for Neuroanatomy and at the Neurosurgical Clinic of the university. In 1982 he became a professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and created the Department of Neurosurgery of the Erasme Hospital.
In 1998, this department was nominated as the "First worldwide World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Neurosurgery" by the World Health Organization. From 1989 to 1992, he was the head of the Belgian Society for Neurosurgery.
Between 1991 and 1994, he presided over the French Language Society for Neurosurgery. Between 1997 and 2001, he became chairman of the Education Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies.
Jacques Brotchi became senator in 2004. In 2005, he joined the scientific committee of the Baillet Latour Prize and became chairman of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies.
In 2000, he was awarded the Joseph Maisin Prize.
In 2008, he was one of the two Mensch of the Year of the Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif de Belgique. In May 2007, he was made a baron by King Albert II of Belgium. In 2011, he resigned from the board of Université Libre de Bruxelles in protest against the university"s failure to address a series of antisemitic incidents on campus.
Belgian Foreign.
Since 2003, he is a member of the board of the Francqui Foundation. He is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Neurological Surgery and of the French Academy of Surgery.