Napoleon Cybulski was born on September 14, 1854, in Krzywonose, which was then in Polish territory under Russian tsaristic rule. He came from a noble family. After grammar school in Minsk, he started medical studies in Petersburg at the Military Medical Academy. In 1880 he received a diploma in medicine cum exima laude (with the highest distinction). From 1877 to 1885 he was an assistant at the Institute of Physiology. He obtained a doctorate in 1885 [2], with a thesis on the velocity of blood flow as detected by an apparatus called photohematochrometer, of his own construction. He also conducted research on the influence of the phrenic nerve on the respiration rate, and on the larynx and vagus nerves. In 1885 he was offered the position of chairman at the Institute of Physiology at the Jagiellonian University, Krak�w (now Poland, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). There he was dean of the Medical Faculty, and subsequently rector of the University. In Krak�w his scientific career blossomed. In 1895 he isolated the active factor from suprarenal tissue: nadnerczyna, later called adrenalin [1]. He measured and described the velocity of the blood flow in femoral and cervical arteries. He also found that an increase in intracranial pressure causes disturbances in blood flow to the brain [8]. Remaining in the same position, he continued his neurological research. Under Cybulski’s supervision, Adolf Beck (1863–1942) started pioneer studies on the activity of the cerebral cortex in response to peripheral nerve stimulation in dogs and monkeys. Electrodes were placed on the skull to record the changes in the electric potential [5]. In this way they invalidated William Horsley’s notion that these changes reflected activity of muscles of the skull. By further analyses of potential changes, they mapped out sensory regions of cerebral cortex. They also showed that the amplitude of the signal depended on the strength and kind of sensory stimulus and on the depth of anesthesia. They suspected that brain function was mediated by bioelectrical activity of