Raymond Delacy Adams (February 13, 1911 – October 18, 2008) was an American neurologist and

neuropathologist Neuropathology is the study of disease of nervous system tissue, usually in the form of either small surgical biopsies or whole-body autopsies. Neuropathologists usually work in a department of anatomic pathology, but work closely with the clinic ...

. He was Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School and chief of neurology at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

. Along with Maurice Victor, Adams was the author of ''Adams and Victor's Principles of Neurology''. Born near Portland, Oregon, Adams was the son of William Henry Adams and Eva Mabel Morriss. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Psychology. He received his M.D. from the

Duke University School of Medicine The Duke University School of Medicine, commonly known as Duke Med, is the medical school of Duke University. It is located in the Collegiate Gothic-style West Campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The School of Medicine, along wit ...

in 1936. Adams became chief of neurology at Massachusetts General in 1951 retiring in 1977. Adams had an encyclopedic knowledge of adult neurology, pediatric neurology, and neuropathology and is widely regarded as a pre-eminent neurologist of the mid-20th century. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1955. He helped found the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center for Mental Retardation. In 1949, together with Joseph Michael Foley he described negative myoclonus and in 1953 they coined the term

asterixis Asterixis, more colloquially referred to as flapping tremor, is a tremor of the hand when the wrist is extended, sometimes said to resemble a bird flapping its wings. This motor disorder is characterized by an inability to maintain a position, wh ...

. In 1963 the Australian neurologist James Waldo Lance described together with him the posthypoxic myoclonus later called

Lance-Adams syndrome Lance-Adams syndrome (LAS) is a sequela of hypoxic encephalopathy due to respiratory arrest, airway obstruction, cardiac arrest, etc. , several days after the onset of hypoxic encephalopathy. A condition that presents with functional myoclonus asso ...

.Lance JW, Adams RD. "The syndrome of intention or action myoclonus as a sequel to hypoxic encephalopathy". Brain 1963; 86: 111–36 Adams, in collaboration with Dr. C. Miller Fisher, made contributions to the field of cerebrovascular disease, the syndrome of "transient global amnesia", and in 1965 he published an article in the ''New England Journal of Medicine'' describing the syndrome of "normal pressure hydrocephalus". Adams also first described central pontine myelinolysis. Adams died in Boston of complications from congestive heart failure, aged 97.

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