Cornelia Catharina de Lange

Cornelia Catharina de Lange (24 June 1871 – 28 January 1950) was a Dutch pediatrician and neuropathologist who along with Winfried Brachmann first described the genetic disorder named after her, the Cornelia de Lange syndrome.

Life Born in Alkmaar to Catharina Jacoba Luchtmans, her mother, and Adrianus Petrus de Lange, a prominent lawyer in the city, de Lange was pushed to pursue an education in chemistry by her father. She enrolled in the University of Zurich to study chemistry but changed her focus to medicine in 1892. However, because pediatrics did not exist as a specialty in the Netherlands, De Lange moved to Switzerland, where she worked in the children's hospital in Zürich under Oskar Wyss. De Lange also became interested in congenital disorders and their pediatric relevance as theories on human genetics developed during the 1920s and 1930s. She died in Amsterdam at the age of 78.