In the medical literature, diseases and syndromes are sometimes named after the first person to publish a report on, or describe, a condition. This is, of course, a great honour, both for the physician and his or her country and only a handful of Swedish medical researchers have achieved this. Swedish paediatrician Rolf Kostmann (Fig. 1) joined this elite group following his report on what he called infantile hereditary agranulocytosis (agranulocytosis infantilis hereditaria), which was first published 1950 in Swedish (1), and his dissertation in 1956 (2), He was the first to describe severe chronic neutropenia as an inherited disease. This article is protected by copyright.