Cécile Vogt

Cécile Vogt-Mugnier (27 March 1875 – 4 May 1962) was a French neurologist from Haute-Savoie. She and her husband Oskar Vogt are known for their extensive cytoarchetecture studies on the brain.

Professional life

Education and career Vogt-Mugnier obtained her medical doctorate in Paris in 1900 and studied under Pierre Marie at the Bicêtre Hospital. At the time, women only made up 6% of those receiving medical doctorates, even though it had been thirty years since women were first admitted to medical studies. Vogt-Mugnier and her husband's findings on myelinogenesis led to her dissertation work on the fiber systems in the cat cerebral cortex (Étude sur la myelination of hémishères cérébraux) and the beginning of their research in architectonics.

In 1911, Vogt-Mugnier rediscovered the so-called 'status marmoratus' of the corpus striatum, characterized by slow, writhing, purposeless movements mainly affecting the hands and face. This syndrome had already been described by Gabriel Anton in 1896, however his paper attracted little attention whereas Vogt-Mugnier's report brought it to the forefront of research in basal ganglia pathology. Vogt-Mugnier continued to lead the pioneering work on the neuroanatomy of the thalamus and together with Hermann Oppenheim published their findings on hereditary palsy and double athetosis, in which she noted the mottled appearance of the striatum.

In January 1923, the Vogts traveled to Moscow to participate in the First All-Russian Congress for Psychoneurology. While there, they delivered a lecture on 'pathoarchitectonics and pathoclisis' and reported on their twenty-five years of experience in investigating the structures of the cerebral cortex.

After 1933 the Vogts collided with the Nazi regime over their Russian contacts and their fierce defense of their scientific independence and their collaborators, forcing Oskar to retire from their brain research institute in Berlin. However, they were able to continue their work on a smaller scale in Neustadt. This institute served as the basis for the 1914 formation of the Kaiser Institut für Hirnforschung (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research), of which Oskar was a director. This institute also gave rise to the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in 1945.

Despite never achieving a formal position of power in these institutes, Vogt-Mugnier was described by former collaborator Adolf Hopf as having significant control over the organizational work:

[She took on] not merely the difficult tasks of administration and financing but also the internal organisation of the institute down to the last detail. She made sure that the methods of brain study met and maintained the highest standards. The collection of animal and human brain sections, the largest in the world... was in a sense her personal property; she was familiar with each case and each section; without her help, many staff members would not have been able to use the collection. Vogt-Mugnier also received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Freiburg and Jena

Personal life

Early life Cécile Vogt-Mugnier was born Augustine Marie Cécile Mugnier in Annecy, France and she lost her father when she was only two years old. A wealthy and devoutly religious aunt paid for her education at a convent school, but Cécile rebelled against the system shortly after her first communion. Disinherited, she returned to live with her mother but continued with her studies. She prepared for her baccalauréat examinations with private teachers and obtained a bachelor's degree in science. At the age of eighteen she became one of the very few women to be admitted to the medical school in Paris.

Family In 1897, 22-year-old Cécile Vogt-Mugnier found herself pregnant, unmarried, and in the middle of earning a medical degree. While at Bicêtre Vogt-Mugnier met her future husband, Oskar Vogt, when he came to Paris to work with Joseph Jules Déjérine (and his wife, Augusta Marie Dejerine-Klumke, who collaborated with him). Little is known about their first meetings in 1898, except that they hardly understood each other's language. Claire Vogt (1898-1978) was a illegitimate daughter of Vogt-Mugnier born out of wedlock by an unknown father. At the age of 4 she is recognized by Oskar Vogt as her daughter. She was a pioneering pediatric neurologist and neuropsychiatrist in Paris. 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.

Personality As a young child, Vogt-Mugnier was described as already having "an independent and unconventional mind". The neurologist Igor Klatzo, who worked with Vogt at the brain research institute in Schwarzwald (from 1946 to 1949), described her as a liberal woman with humanistic ideals: According to Klatzo many thought that Vogt-Mugnier was the most distinguished of the Vogt couple and that it was she who had developed the basic ideas for their work on the basal ganglia. Despite this, she remained in the background, taking on the role of caring wife and mother, supporting Oskar and defending his actions.

The neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield met the couple in 1928 and recalled Vogt-Mugnier: Her intelligence often surprised people and left those who encountered her with a lasting impression:

Late life Later in their career, the Vogts turned their focus to genetics, experimenting with insects that they had collected on their holiday trips to the Caucasus, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Balearic Islands. Their younger daughter Marguerite pursued this research for some ten years before departing to California.

They continued their work until Oskar died in 1959, and after the death of her husband Vogt-Mugnier moved to Cambridge, England to be with their elder daughter Marthe. Cécile died there in 1962.