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Joseph J. Volpe, MD

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Joseph J. Volpe, MD

Founder of Neonatal Neurology

Joseph J. Volpe was born on December 17, 1938. He earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed his pediatric residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he came under the influence of Philip Dodge, one of the country’s leading pediatric neurologists. Dodge urged the young Volpe to direct his energies toward the newborn — an underdeveloped corner of clinical neurology where, as Volpe recognized, no clear framework existed for understanding brain injury in the smallest patients. He took the advice.

After a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, Volpe joined Dodge at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he served as Director of the Division of Pediatric Neurology. It was there, in the 1970s, that the work began in earnest. His 1973 paper on neonatal seizures in the New England Journal of Medicine was among the earliest systematic descriptions of seizure patterns unique to the newborn — establishing that what happened in the newborn brain was neurologically distinct from anything seen in older children or adults. From 1975 to 1977 he practiced as a neonatologist to immerse himself in treating systemic issues in neonates.

In the 1980s, Volpe devised a classification system for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and proposed one of two grading scales for intraventricular hemorrhage that remains in clinical use today (the other was developed by Dr. Lynne Papile). When he reported that the rate of IVH among small premature infants was far higher than previously recognized, the finding drew attention well beyond the medical community. Real-time cranial ultrasound, just then becoming available at the bedside, gave clinicians their first window into the living newborn brain — and Volpe was among the first to look through it systematically.

In 1981 he published the first edition of Neurology of the Newborn, writing the entire book himself — a feat he would repeat through four more solo editions. The book gave formal recognition to the idea that the neurological problems of the developing brain were fundamentally different from those of older patients, and it became the essential reference for anyone caring for sick newborns, and has remained so to this day.

Volpe came to Boston Children’s Hospital in 1990, where he served as Neurologist-in-Chief and Bronson Crothers Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory work there centered on periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) and the broader condition he named the “encephalopathy of prematurity” — recognizing that preterm brain injury was not simply a matter of bleeding or focal tissue loss, but a complex disruption of the brain’s own developmental program. His landmark 2009 review in The Lancet Neurology reframed preterm brain injury as a complex amalgam of primary destruction and secondary developmental disruption — a shift that redirected the field toward neuroprotection and developmental support as treatment goals.

Volpe served as President of the Child Neurology Society and received both the Hower Award for lifetime contributions in 1990 and the Bernard Sachs Award for scientific achievement in 2000— one of only two child neurologists to have earned all three distinctions. In 1998 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He was recognized by the Newborn Brain Society as the first recipient of their Honorary Fellow award in 2020.

Volpe’s Neurology of the Newborn is now in its seventh edition (2024), with 41 contributors and five new chapters, and has accumulated more than 50,000 citations across the literature. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 480 peer-reviewed journal articles, 75% of them as first author. He holds the title of Bronson Crothers Professor of Neurology, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School and Neurologist-in-Chief, Emeritus, at Boston Children’s Hospital, and remains scientifically active.

  • Joseph J. Volpe – Wikipedia
  • Saber H, et al. “‘Father of neonatal neurology’: the life of Joseph J. Volpe.” Journal of the Neurological Sciences. 2025.
  • Volpe JJ. “Neonatal Seizures.” New England Journal of Medicine. 1973;289(8):413–416.
  • Volpe JJ. Brain injury in premature infants: a complex amalgam of destructive and developmental disturbances. Lancet Neurol. 2009 Jan;8(1):110-24.
  • Volpe JJ. The encephalopathy of prematurity–brain injury and impaired brain development inextricably intertwined. Semin Pediatr Neurol. 2009 Dec;16(4):167-78. 
  • Volpe JJ, Inder TE (eds.). Volpe’s Neurology of the Newborn. 7th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier; 2024. ISBN: 9780443105135. Buy on Amazon

Last Updated on 03/20/26