Nowadays, not many people read Brain on Head in Brain. That could change, because this year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Russell Brain's mostly admiring six-page essay called Henry Head: A Man and His Ideas, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Dr Head's birth. Which means that this year we are, all of us, entitled to celebrate the 150th anniversary of that blessed event.

Dr Brain – who was also Lord Brain, Baron Brain of Eynsham – was editor of the journal Brain.

It would have been surprising had he not written that essay about Dr Head. That's because Head preceded Brain (the man) as head (which is to say, editor) of the journal (the name of which, I repeat for clarity, is Brain).

Head headed Brain from 1905-1923. Brain became head in 1954, dying in office in 1967. No other editors in the journal's long history (it was founded in 1879) could or did boast surnames that so stunningly announced their obsession, profession and place of employ. One of Dr Brain's final articles, in 1963, is called Some reflections on brain and mind.

Dr Head wrote many monographs, some quite lengthy, for Brain. The first, a 135-page behemoth, appeared in 1893, long before he became editor. In it, Dr Head gives special thanks to a Dr Buzzard, citing Dr Buzzard's generosity, the nature of which is not specified.

Reading Dr Brain's Brain tribute and other material about Dr Head, one gets the strong impression that Head had a big head, and that it was stuffed full of knowledge, which Dr Head was not shy about sharing. Brain writes that "Some men ... feel impelled to impart information to others. Head was one of those."

Brain then quotes Professor HM Turnbull as saying: "I had the good fortune when first going to the hospital to meet daily in the mornings on the steam engine underground railway Dr Henry Head. He ... kindly taught me throughout our journeys about physical signs, much to the annoyance of our fellow travellers; indeed, in his characteristic keenness, he spoke so loudly that as we walked to the hospital from St Mary's station people on the other side of the wide Whitechapel Road would turn to look at us."

Brain says that Head "would illustrate his lectures by himself reproducing the involuntary movements or postures produced by nervous disease, and 'Henry Head doing gaits' was a perennial attraction."

In 1904, at the age of 42, Head married a headmistress – Ruth Mayhew of Brighton high school for girls. Brain assures us that she was "a fit companion for him in intelligence".

Brain, though respectful of Head, suggests that his predecessor was over-brainy: "He had many ideas: he bubbled over with them, and perhaps he was sometimes too ready to convince himself of their truth."

• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize