In 2017, it was two hundred years since James Parkinson published “An Essay on the Shaking Palsy” and twenty years since α-synuclein aggregation came to the fore. In 1998, multiple system atrophy joined Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies as the third major synucleinopathy. Here we describe the work, which led to the identification of α-synuclein in Lewy bodies, Lewy neurites and Papp-Lantos bodies. We also review some of the findings reported since 1997.