Niels Alexander Lassen (December 7, 1926 – April 30, 1997) was a

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neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

and pioneer in the fields of

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neuropsychiatry Neuropsychiatry or Organic Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neurop ...

and

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. He was born and died in

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. Lassen has been called the greatest Danish brain researcher since

Niels Steensen Niels Steensen ( da, Niels Steensen; Latinized to ''Nicolaus Steno'' or ''Nicolaus Stenonius''; 1 January 1638 – 25 November 1686University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

, and Niels Lassen graduated as medical doctor from the same university in 1951. With his colleague Ole Munck he began in the 1950s to use

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for the measurement of the blood circulation in the brain, and in the beginning of the 1960s he together with from

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'' article in 1978. He was employed at Bispebjerg Hospital in 1958 to 1996. From 1963 he established and lead the department of Clinical Physiology. He wrote 710 scientific publications in the periode 1954-2000+. He was married to Edda Sveinsdottir who as a computer scientist helped with the development of the (at that time) advanced computer technology for image construction of the regional brain measurements.

The Niels Lassen Award

There is a ''Niels Lassen Award'' presented by the International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism (ISCBFM). ((The Danish medical doctor, brain researcher and "science entertainer" Peter Lund Madsen was a student of Niels A. Lassen, and Peter Lund Madsen received the Niels A. Lassen Prize in 2002.)) Previous recipients have included : * 1999 - Matthias Endres, Mass. General Hospital,

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, USA and the Exp. Neurology, Charite,

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, Germany * 2001 - Sylvain Doré, Departments of Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine and Neuroscience,

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, Maryland, USA * 2003 - Fahmeed Hyder, Department of Diagnostic Radiology,

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, CT, USA * 2005 - Kirsten Caesar, Department of Medical Physiology,

Copenhagen University The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

, Denmark * 2007 - Kazuhiko Hayashi, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine,

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, Japan * 2009 - Alyson A. Miller,

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, Australia * 2011 - Virginia Newcombe,

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* 2013 - Peiying Li,

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, China * 2015 - Sjoerd Finnema,

, CT, USA Lassen himself received the

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Prize in 1968, from the

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. and was the first recipient of the inaugural International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism (ISCBFM) Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.The Lifetime Achievement Award
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References

Bibliography

* Niels A. Lassen, William A. Perl, ''Tracer kinetic methods in medical physiology'', Raven,

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, 1979. . * Olaf B. Paulson, "Niels A. Lassen (1926-1997)", In ''Festskrift. Dansk Neurologisk Selskab 1900-2000'', Jørgen Therkelsen(editor), Lægeforeningens forlag, Copenhagen, 2000. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lassen, Niels Alexander 1926 births 1997 deaths Danish neurologists Academic awards 20th-century Danish physicians