Who is Phineas Gage from Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and what is their importance?

Phineas Gage was a railroad worker in the nineteenth century who had part of his brain destroyed in an explosion. Prior to the brain injury, Gage had been a hard working conservative man. After the injury his personality changed remarkably and he became irritable and boisterous. Eagleman uses Gage's example to illustrate how much the biology of our brain affects our personality.