Broca, Paul

Related Category: Medicine: Biographies

(pōl brôkä´), 1824–80, French pathologist, anthropologist, and pioneer in neurosurgery. A professor in Paris at the Faculty of Medicine and at the Anthropological Institute, he was a founder of the Anthropological Society of Paris (1859) and of the Revue d'anthropologie (1872). An authority on aphasia, he localized the brain center for articulate speech in the convolution of Broca, or Broca's area (the third convolution of the left frontal lobe). He originated methods of classifying hair and skin color and of establishing brain and skull ratios.