Bengt Liliequist: life and accomplishments of a true renaissance man

Abstract

In the 1970s, the membrane of Liliequist became the accepted name for a small band of arachnoid membrane separating the interpeduncular and chiasmatic cisterns, making it one of the most recent of the universally accepted medical eponyms. The story of its discovery, however, cannot be told without a thorough understanding of the man responsible and his contribution to the growth of a specialty. Bengt Liliequist lived during what many would consider the Golden Age of neuroradiology. With his colleagues at the Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm, he helped set the standard for appropriate imaging of the CNS and contributed to more accurate localization of intracerebral as well as spinal lesions. The pneumoencephalographic discovery of the membrane that was to bear his name serves merely as a starting point for a career that spanned five decades and included the defense of two separate doctoral theses, the last of which occurred after his 80th birthday. Although the recognition of neuroradiology as a subspecialty did not occur in his home country of Sweden until after his retirement, and technological progress saw the obsolescence of the procedure that he had mastered, Dr. Liliequist's accomplishments and his contributions to the current understanding of neuroanatomy merit our continued praise.