Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), German psychiatrist. Kraepelin is considered the founder of modern scientific psychiatry and psychopharmacology. He thought that psychiatric diseases were caused by biological and genetic disorders and sought to find them. Kraepelin classified diseases according to common patterns of symptoms rather than by the similarity of the major symptoms. Using this method, which is still used today, he identified schizophrenia and manic depression as separate diseases, and was the first to realise they were often inherited. Kraepelin, with his colleague Alois Alzheimer, was also the co- discover of Alzheimer's disease.