Max Nonne received his early education at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg, and later studied medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, and Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1884.^[1] After graduation, he served as an assistant in the Heidelberg medical clinic under Wilhelm Heinrich Erb (1840-1921) and in the surgical clinic in Kiel under Johannes Friedrich August von Esmarch (1823-1908), then in 1889 returned to Hamburg as a neurologist. During the same year, he became head physician in the department of internal medicine at the Red Cross Hospital. In 1896 he was appointed director of neurology at Eppendorf Hospital, Hamburg.

Nonne became a titular professor of neurology in 1913, and in 1919 began teaching classes in neurology at the newly founded University of Hamburg, where in 1925 he became professor ordinarius. Here he worked with Alfons Maria Jakob (1884-1931).

Max Nonne was one of the four physicians asked to investigate Vladimir Ilich Lenin during the Russian leaders' final disease.

• Friedrich Meggendorfer

• Nonne-Apelt reaction: Sensitive method for demonstrating fibrin-globulin in liquor cerebrospinalis.
• Nonne-Milroy-Meige disease: Chronic familial lymphoedema of the limbs.

• Syphilis und Nervensystem. Berlin, 1902; fifth edition – 1924. (Translated into English and Spanish).
• Diagnose und Therapie der syphilogenen Erkrankungen des Zentralnervensystems. Halle, 1913. 47 pages.^[2]

• Max Nonne at Who Named It

• Works by or about Max Nonne at Internet Archive
• Newspaper clippings about Max Nonne in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW