Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/185

 GUSTAF RETZIUS BY N. C. NELSON

A NTHROPOLOGY recently lost a distinguished worker in 2~\. the person of Gustaf Retzius, Emeritus Professor of Anatomy at the Caroline Institute in Stockholm, who died July 21, 1919, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.

Sweden, during the last two centuries, has given to the world several names that must forever remain inscribed in the annals of science. Whether Gustaf Retzius belongs to this group only time can tell; but, certainly, it is seldom given to any single individual to render service to science on so monumental a scale and at the same time service of such uniformly high quality. Primarily a pioneer in modern medical research and in the development of histological technique, he found time also to contribute important works on physical anthropology, one brief paper being a description of the skeletal material obtained by G. Nordenskiold from the cliff-dwel- lings of the Mesa Verde in Colorado. It is fitting to recall also that his father before him Anders Retzius was an enthusiastic anthro- pologist and that he too wrote several brief papers on American subjects.

The following intimate remarks on the career of Gustaf Retzius are based mostly on accounts in the Stockholm papers for July 22, and largely on the appreciation penned by Prof. Carl M. Furst, one of his oldest students as well as his lifelong friend and co-worker.

Gustaf Retzius was born in Stockholm in 1842. His family belonged to the learned aristocracy of Sweden, there being three generations of naturalists behind him on his father's side and several men of science on his mother's side as well. His father, Anders Retzius, himself a noted anatomist, was a born genius, always bub- bling over with original ideas, few of which however were carried to completion. Growing up in a stimulating atmosphere of this kind it was but natural that the young Retzius should follow in

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