Lawrence M. Brass, MD (1956–2006)

The loss of a colleague is always sad, but the loss of Larry Brass is an especially tragic event. Larry was just about to reach his 50th birthday. He had established himself as a leading academic neurologist, and he had so much to give. He had recently identified impaired glucose tolerance—prediabetes—as a risk factor for stroke and was in the early phases of launching a clinical trial to see whether, by treating impaired glucose tolerance, it might be possible to reduce the risk of stroke. He was a prime mover in establishing the Yale Database Project, which includes more than six million patients—every person in the United States aged 65 or older with a stroke or stroke-related diagnosis and every hospital admission for these people during a 14-year interval. It is the first complete database of stroke among the elderly and, had he lived, Larry would undoubtedly have mined it very fruitfully.

Larry Brass was uniquely special as a scholar, as a friend, and as a teacher. He joined the Yale faculty as assistant professor of Neurology in …