Sir Martin Roth FRS

Abstract

Since the mid-19th century central Europe had been the cradle of conceptual thinking in clinical psychiatry. Following the turbulence and persecution in the 1920s and 1930s some of a later generation of mid-European psychiatrists emigrated to Britain, bringing with them the traditions of meticulous and detailed observation, a broad clinical perspective and fresh ways of looking at problems. Among those individuals making significant contributions were Willy Mayer-Gross, Erich Guttman, Erwin Stengel, Felix Post, F. Kraupl Taylor, Max Hamilton and Martin Roth. Roth, who was born in Budapest in 1917, the last survivor of this extraordinarily gifted group, died on 26 September 2006 at the age of 88.