Some controversial nineteenth-century theories about brain shape and human nature are revealed by an extensive collection of neuroscience memorabilia, reports Alison Abbott. Cesare Lombroso's contemporaries considered him to be either a genius or a madman, or both. A professor at the University of Turin, Italy, from 1876 until his death in 1909, Lombroso was a pioneer of criminal psychology. But his unshakeable theory that criminals were born rather than made, and could be recognized by their atavistic physical characteristics, went down badly in some quarters.
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