The National Education Board (JEN) and the philanthropic body, the Rockefeller Foundation, played a crucial role in funding the participation of Portuguese researchers in international scientific communication networks.

The study of a collection of documents relating to the JEN, following the recent granting of access to the Camões Institute archive in Lisbon, has highlighted the extent to which this Portuguese government agency, along with the Foundation, provided support in the early 1930s for research in the fields of Neurology and Neuro-surgery.

The present paper seeks to show how these bodies provided crucial support for the production and dissemination of research carried out by Egas Moniz and those who worked alongside him, as well as honouring them and promoting the recognition of their scientific work.

This included scholarships to institutions both at home and abroad, including the London Hospital, subsidies granted to the Institute of Neurology of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, funding for academics to travel abroad and present papers at international scientific meetings and the award of honorary doctorates, and support from the JEN for international conferences chaired by Egas Moniz. Thus a range of means of support was provided for the research carried out by the future Nobel prizewinner and his associates. We show how the image he projected of himself as a scientist who was purposely held back by the Portuguese state during the dictatorship, a portrayal which has endured up until the present at the national and international level, is at odds with the evidence we have found in the above-mentioned archive.

*This work is financed by funds FEDER through the Operational Competitiveness Factors Program (COMPETE) and national funds through FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) by the project HC/0077/2009.