Department of Pediatrics and Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Norrköping Hospital, Linköping University, SE-60182, Norrköping, Sweden. larsstenhammar@yahoo.com.
Seventy years ago, the Swedish pediatrician Rolf Kostmann (1909-1982) was the first to report on a previous unknown lethal hereditary neutropenia in infants, Kostmann's disease. This essay presents the man behind the syndrome rather than focusing on the disease itself.