their medical careers. The collection is currently under the care of GWU's Special Collections Research Center, located in the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library. Freeman was known for his eccentricities and he complemented his theatrical approach to demonstrating surgery by sporting a cane, goatee, and a narrow-brimmed hat. Death Freeman died of complications arising from an operation for cancer on May 31, 1972. He was survived by four children—Walter, Frank, Paul and Lorne—who became defenders of their father's legacy. Paul became a psychiatrist in San Francisco, and the eldest, Walter Jr., became a professor of neurobiology at University of California, Berkeley. Contributions to psychiatry Walter Freeman nominated his mentor António Egas Moniz for a Nobel prize, and in 1949 Moniz won the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine. He pioneered and helped open up the psychiatric world to the idea of what would become psychosurgery. At the time, it was seen as a possible treatment for severe mental illness, but "within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine." He also helped to demonstrate the idea that mental events have a physiological basis. Despite his interest in the mind, Freeman was "uninterested in animal experiments or understanding what was happening in the brain". Freeman was also co-founder and president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology from 1946 to 1947 and a contributor and member of the American Psychiatric Association. Works Freeman, W. and Watts, J.W. Psychosurgery. Intelligence, Emotion and Social Behavior Following Prefrontal Lobotomy for Mental Disorders, Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Springfield (Ill.) 1942, pp. 337. References Further reading External links Guide to the Walter Freeman and James Watts papers, 1918–1988, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University The Lobotomist, authoritative biography of Freeman by Jack El-Hai New England Journal of Medicine article Article referencing Jack El-Hai's initial Washington Post feature on Freeman A Brief History of Lobotomy 'My Lobotomy' documentary program from SoundPortraits.org "Shedding Light on Shadowland" American neurologists 1895 births 1972 deaths Physicians from Philadelphia Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania alumni Yale University alumni American psychiatrists Lobotomy Human subject research in psychiatry