TWO FUNERAL ORATIONS 



explained to me some microbiological problem, fully clarifying the 

 subject in a few terse sentences. 



In spite of the fact that many honours were conferred upon him - 

 honorary doctorates, the Hansen- and Copley medals, election to 

 many foreign scientific societies - Kluyver remained a modest man. 

 He never prided himself on these distinctions ; he always made it ap- 

 pear as if he owed them to some accident or chance. When he had been 

 awarded the Emil Christian Hansen medal in Copenhagen and had 

 returned to Delft, his students and associates celebrated the occasion 

 by presenting him with an enormous cake bearing the inscription, 

 'I am only a simple man'. It was one of his own, characteristic slogans. 



Kluyver seldom spoke of things to come; rarely mentioned the fact 

 that, at the end of 1956, he would have to give up his beloved home, 

 and a year later his old laboratory. It was as if he himself doubted 

 that he would witness these events. 



And now this beautiful life has suddenly been cut off. Former 

 pupils, spread out over the entire world, will share these moments with 

 us. They will gratefully remember their master. Every one of them 

 has taken along something he had received from him; in difficult 

 moments they will all be inclined to ask: 'What would Kluyver have 

 said?' 



Nothing is ever lost in this world. Kluyver is no more; but the seed 

 he has sown on the fields of science and in our hearts has long since 

 germinated, and those who have known him well will retain the 

 memory of an eminent scientist, but above all of a complete human 

 being with a big heart. 



And if we can do this, how much more strongly will these memories 

 remain alive in his children who have known him in other ways, and 

 who will be grateful that they had so excellent a father. 



The relation with his children I cannot better express than in the 

 words in which he characterized his own education, and which are 

 taken from his inaugural lecture in which he addressed his parents 

 thus: 'The education you gave me was characterized by acts of love 

 rather than by verbose theory'. 



This friend of half a century, who actually never knew any rest, 



- may he now rest in peace. 



A. v. Rossem 



161 



