Sir William Richard Gowers (1845–1915) is a name hallowed in the minds of most neurologists as one of the great Victorian founders of our discipline. He is probably best remembered for the remarkable manual first published in 1886, still a continual source of reference and wisdom, remarkable for its wealth of clinical detail, experience, and understanding. Even more remarkable is it when we realise that there was virtually no neurochemistry, minimal electrophysiology, and of course only the most fundamental radiology and neuropathology available to him.

His name is preserved in several eponymous conditions, though paradoxically he inveighed about of the use of eponyms:

“Scientific nomenclature should be itself scientific, not founded upon accidents. However anxious we may be to honour individuals, we have no right to do so at the expense of the convenience of all future generations of …