the syndrome hereditary cerebellar ataxia, though it became known Marie's ataxia. While the hereditary patterns were clearly distinct, there was on-going debate well into the 1940s over whether Marie's ataxia was really distinct from Freidreich's ataxia and Strümpell's paraplegia and if these category's themselves represented a single disease or many. This was because of the heterogenous nature of hereditary ataxias, the similarity of symptoms, and the lack of understood biochemical mechanisms. Further frustration with the ambiguity of terms introduced by Marie and Friedreich resulted in the creation of other systems to classify ataxias. Gordon Morgan Holmes and Godwin Greenfield each developed systems of categorizing ataxias, giving rise to categories called olivopontocerebellar atrophy and spinocerebellar degradation, though little consensus between the systems was achieved, and many terms are used interchangeably. In the depression era United States, the Schut family in Minnesota was one family known to carry a hereditary ataxia. Several members of the family actively participated in research and the family consented to post mortem examinations of the brains of several deceased relatives. The disease in the Schut family was found to have an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern, and afflicted the spinocerebellar tract. In 1945, John Schut received free medical school education for his service with the United States Army during the second world war and began his own efforts researching hereditary ataxia. Schut developed ataxia like many of his relatives. In 1957, when Schut's ataxia progressed to a point where he was unable to continue work in regular medical practice, he founded the National Ataxia Foundation with lab space donated by Glenwood Hills Hospital in Minneapolis. John Schut's nephew, Lawerence Schut, also became an ataxia researcher and contributed to localizing a spinocerebellar ataxia gene to the human leukocyte antigen complex in chromosome 6. The success in linking one of these class of diseases to a locus showed that the classification systems in use were unable to distinguish between diseases with many different causes. Many ataxic disorders which were historically identified as Marie's ataxia, olivopontocerebellar atrophy or other names were now reclassified as types of spinocerebellar ataxia, each type numbered in order as a new locus was found. In 1993, the gene and a mutation causing spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 was identified. It was the first genetic defect found known to cause an ataxic disorder. Research directions Treatment and mitigation of neurodegenerative disorders is of particular interest to researchers, and