Nigerian-born pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu published his controversial paper in the journal Neurosurgery on the brain of Mike Webster, the Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, who died in 2002. Omalu is the subject of both a recent book and film that share the same blunt title: Concussion. The book, by Jeanne Marie Laskas, expands on her reporting in the 2009 GQ exposé “Game Brain.” (The film, which stars Will Smith as Omalu, will be released by Sony Pictures this Christmas.) Omalu’s article described in detail his discovery that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), an impact-based head trauma, was killing football players and other athletes who suffered repeated blows to the head. Three doctors with the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury committee wrote a letter to the editors of Neuroscience alleging Omalu had misunderstood his own findings. But even as the NFL tried to bury his breakthrough, the doctor continued to accumulate data on what head trauma did to the brains of athletes until a former neurosurgeon for the Pittsburgh Steelers who had known Webster called Omalu to tell him he believed him. As Laskas wrote in GQ, “It was the first time anyone who ever had anything to do with the NFL had validated Omalu’s work.”