Background

Paul Broca was born on June 28, 1824, in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France, the son of Jean Pierre "Benjamin" Broca, a country practitioner and former Napoleonic surgeon with Huguenot background, and Annette Thomas, a well-educated daughter of a Calvinist, Reformed Protestant, preacher.

Education

At the local college, Paul Broca received a Bachelier es in letters and diplomas in mathematics and physical sciences. He entered the University of Paris medical school (was reorganized in 1970) in 1841 and graduated in 1844 when most of his contemporaries were just beginning as medical students. Then in an unusually short time, Broca became externe (1843), interne (1844), and prosector of anatomy (1848); he received the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1849.

Career

Broca’s graduate studies were in pathology, anatomy, and surgery, and in 1853 he became an assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine and surgeon of the Central Bureau. His interests later turned to anthropology, and he was one of the most outstanding pioneers of the new discipline. During this period he held important posts in the hospitals of Paris, finally serving as surgeon to the Necker Hospital. In 1867 Broca was elected to the chair of pathologie externe at the Faculty of Medicine, and the following year he became a professor of clinical surgery. He served in this capacity until his death. He also was elected a life member of the French Senate, representing science, six months before he died.

Broca’s versatility was noteworthy and his knowledge wide; his bibliography reveals the breadth of his scientific and clinical work. He published several minor papers on anatomy, as well as La splanchnology, a volume of the Atlas d’anatomie descriptive. During the twenty years or so after his graduation, he wrote extensively on pathology, including a two-volume work on tumors, Traité des tumors. These studies were closely associated with his contributions to surgery, which also appeared in his publications of this period; a book on strangulated hernia (1853) and one on aneurysm (1856) demonstrated his theoretical and practical knowledge of surgery.

Broca is, however, better known for his role in the discovery of cortical localization in the brain. This concept had begun with the phrenologists earlier in the century; but the majority of physicians, following Pierre Flourens, denied it. In a famous discussion in Paris in 1861, Broca was able to provide the essential link in the argument favoring the localization of speech function in the left inferior frontal gyrus (since known as Broca’s convolution); an aphasia patient was found to have a lesion there. Much later it was shown that the lesion was not so precisely located as Broca had claimed, but his evidence was nevertheless a significant step toward proving that the cerebral hemisphere has localized areas of function, although precise parcellation is no longer accepted. He published extensively on cerebral localization and on normal, comparative, and pathological anatomy of the brain.

Broca’s equally important labors were in anthropology, which field he helped to create. In 1847 he served on a commission to report on excavations in the cemetery of the Celestins, and this led him to study craniology and ethnology. These subjects suited him best, for they allowed him to use his anatomical and mathematical skills as well as his diversified knowledge; and his synthetic abilities were necessary to coordinate the wide range of data presented. He was mainly responsible for the formation of the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris in 1859, of the Revue d’anthropologie in 1872, and of the École d’Anthropologie in 1876. At this time anthropology was considered by both church and government to be sinister and subversive, but Broca surmounted all opposition and eventually established it securely. He invented at least twenty-seven instruments for the more accurate study of craniology, and he helped to standardize methods. Between 1850 and his death he published 223 papers and monographs on general anthropology, ethnology, physical anthropology, and other aspects of the field.

Achievements

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  Pierre Paul Broca was a physician, anatomist and anthropologist, 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 suffering from aphasia contained lesions in a particular part of the cortex, in the left frontal region. This was the first anatomical proof of localization of brain function. Broca's work also contributed to the development of physical anthropology, advancing the science of anthropometry.
  
  He also invented more than 20 measuring instruments for the use in craniology, and helped standardize measuring procedures.
  
  His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
  
  Paul Broca held honorary degrees from many learned institutions, both in France and abroad.
  
  After the death, Paul Broca donated his body for scientific purposes. In addition, Broca’s brain is one of the exhibit items of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.

Works

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• book

  • On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo 1864
  • L'ordre des primates: Parallèle anatomique de l'homme et des singes 1870
  • Instructions craniologiques et craniométriques de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris 1875
  • Mémoires d'anthropologie, Vol. 1
  • Mémoires d'anthropologie, Vol. 2
  • Traité des tumeurs, Vol. 1
  • Traité des tumeurs, Vol. 2

Politics

During his life, Paul Broca identified as a Liberal.

Views

Quotations: "The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable."

"There are in the human mind a group of faculties and in the brain groups of convolutions, and the facts assembled by science so far allow to state, as I said before, that the great regions of the mind correspond to the great regions of the brain."

"Private practice and marriage - those twin extinguishers of science."

"We are permitted to suppose that the relatively small size of the female brain depends in part upon her physical inferiority and in part upon her intellectual inferiority."

Membership

Paul Broca was an active figure in the Anatomical Society of Paris and in the Society of Surgery. He was a member of the Académie française, and at his death was vice-president of the French Academy of Medicine.

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  In 1858, Paul Broca was elected as member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

  Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , Germany

  1858

Connections

On July 6, 1857, Paul Broca married Adele Augustine Lugol, the daughter of a Paris physician. The couple had three children.

Father:

Jean Pierre "Benjamin" Broca

Mother:

Annette Broca (Thomas)

Wife:

Augustine Augustine Broca (Lugol)

Daughter:

Jeanne Francoise Pauline Broca

Son:

Benjamin Auguste Broca

Son:

Élie André Broca

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume II
  1970