Jules Angst, MD, FRCPsych (Hon.)

Jules Angst died in his hundredth year.When I learnt of his death, I was dumbfounded, as I had come to come to take his longevity for granted.I got to know him soon after taking up the chair of Clinical and Social Psychiatry at the University of Zurich psychiatric hospital ('the Burghölzli') in 1996, when he asked me whether I wanted to take over theby then legendary -Zurich psychiatric epidemiology cohort study.So began 30 years of friendship and scientific collaboration.One of the most influential psychiatrists of our times, Jules Angst helped change the landscape of mental health research for the benefit of untold numbers of patients, and his legacy survives in the work of many scientists and clinicians.Jules, who was born in 1926 and died in May this year, grew up in Zurich, Switzerland.His father was a technical draftsman with the railways, and his mother managed a baker's shop.He was not destined by birth for academe.But by the age of ten he knew that he wanted to be a doctor.What he had in abundance was energy, brain power and an appetite for reading and hard work.From his father, who was an amateur entomologist, he learned the importance of observation and classification.University study was possible because he was an only child.Student jobs at the post office, as a lifeguard and in his uncle's carpentry shop paid for a typewriter and his training analysis with the Jungian Kurt Binswanger.After medical studies in Zurich (1946-52) and military service, he started as a junior doctor at the Burghölzli.The hospital was headed at the time by Manfred Bleuler and it was associated historically with many famous names, including Eugen Bleuler and Carl Gustav Jung.Jules' immediate task was to provide analytic psychotherapy for patients with schizophrenia under the supervision of Gaetano Benedetti.Jules came a.