368 



NATURE 



[May 19, 192 1 



Obituary. 



Prof. H. W. G. von Waldeyer. 



THE years of the war were disastrous to 

 German anatomy, the deaths of men like 

 Gaupp and Brodmann, Biitschli and Edinger, 

 to mention only four, leaving gaps which have 

 not been filled. But on January 23 of this year 

 the Nestor of German anatomy, Geheimrath Hein- 

 rich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz, died 

 in the eighty-fifth year of his age, a month 

 after Austria had lost one of her leading 

 anatomists. Prof. HoU, of Gratz. Waldeyer 

 was a man of genial and commanding per- 

 sonality, who, from the time he became pro- 

 fessor of anatomy in Berlin in 1883, had 

 been the recognised leader of German 

 anatomists and biologists, and their spokesman 

 at home and abroad. Even in his old age he was 

 tireless in his attendance at congresses and scien- 

 tific meetings, and undertook long journeys to all 

 parts of Europe and poured forth fluent orations 

 in sonorous and easy periods. But, apart from 

 his gifts as an orator and congressman, Waldeyer 

 had an exceptionally wide knowledge of anatomy, 

 histology, embryology, pathological anatomy, and 

 anthropology, in each of which he was regarded 

 as an expert who could speak from a personal 

 acquaintance with the facts. 



Born on October i, 1836, Waldeyer did not 

 proceed to his doctorate until 1861, when he sub- 

 mitted to the Faculty in Berlin a dissertation " De 

 claviculae articulis et functione " ; for when he 

 entered the University of Gottingen he devoted 

 himself to pure science, and then, from 1856 to 

 1858, to physiology and pathological anatomy. 

 But during those years he came under the 

 influence of the great Gottingen anatomist Henle, 

 who was responsible for giving Waldeyer an aim 

 in life and the inspiration to follow it. The next 

 three years he spent as assistant to the anatomist 

 Budge ; then as an assistant for two years in the 

 physiological institute at Konigsberg, and for 

 another year in a similar position under R. Heiden- 

 hain at Breslau, where in 1865 he was made 

 extraordinary professor of pathological anatomy, 

 and two years later an ordinary professor of the 

 same subject. He held this position until 1872, 

 and so great was the reputation he established 

 as a pathologist that fifteen years after he had 

 given up pathological for normal anatomy he was 

 called to the bedside of the Emperor Frederick 

 at San Remo as an impartial witness to settle the 

 dispute which had arisen between the surgeons, 

 British and German, as to the nature of the 

 laryngeal growth from which the penultimate 

 Kaiser was suffering. During the long tenure of 

 his chair of pathology Waldeyer did not neglect 

 his chief interest, normal nnatomy and embryo- 

 logv ; for during this period he wrote his famous 

 work " Ueber Eierstock und Ei," illustrations 

 from which have ever since been in every text- 

 book of anatomy, histology, and embryology. 

 NO. 2690, VOL. 107] 



In 1872 Waldeyer for the first time was given 

 charge of a department of anatomy : it was a 

 position of quite exceptional difficulty and delicacy 

 in the new school which the Prussians built up in 

 Strassburg after wresting it from the French. 

 Here Waldeyer displayed his remarkable abilities 

 as a tactful administrator and peace-maker. So 

 successful was he in this formidable task that in 

 1883, when the Prussian Government had another 

 difficult problem to solve, to find a ruccessor to 

 the senile Reichert in Berlin, Waldeyer was 

 appointed", although Koellilcer, Gegenbaur, and 

 His were senior to him and had a greater prestige 

 as anatomists. Waldeyer had a very difficult task 

 to reduce to order the chaos bequeathed to him 

 by Reichert; but he set lo work to build up a 

 great institute, not merely of gross anatomy, but 

 also of histology and embryology. Five years 

 later he was able to secure the establishment of 

 a second professorship of anatomy, to which O. 

 Hertwig was appointed, to relieve Waldeyer of 

 part of the work in histology and the whole of 

 embryology. Waldeyer relinquished his position 

 only about three years ago. In Berlin he came to 

 be regarded as the father of German anthropology 

 after the death of Virchow. He succeeded Max 

 Schultze as editor of the Archiv fiir mikro- 

 scopische Anatomie ; after His's death he became 

 editor of the anatomical part of the Archiv fiir 

 Anatomie und Physiologic, and after Virchow 's 

 death editor of the Jahreshericht fUr die gesamte 

 Medizin. He also succeeded Du Bois-Reymond 

 as the secretary of the Berlin Academy of 

 Sciences, and was made a member of the Prussian 

 Herrenhaus. 



In spite of this overwhelming programme of 

 disturbing engagements, and his ubiquitous pres- 

 ence and active participation in congresses at 

 home and abroad, Waldeyer continued his work 

 of original investigation, and published an un- 

 broken stream of memoirs ranging over the whole 

 of anatomy, histology, embryology, and anthro- 

 pology. Almost every domain of anatomy that he 

 invaded, whether it was the structure of fibrous 

 tissue or bone, the development of teeth, the 

 morphology of the reproductive organs, the com- 

 parative anatomy of hair, or the interpretation of 

 the central nervous system, he reduced to order, 

 and left some clarifying conception, and as a rule 

 some new term, to clear away difficulties of inter- 

 pretation. His work is so voluminous and many- 

 sided that it is impossible to review it concisely. 

 But his well-known efforts to clear up confusion 

 on the subject of karyokinesis, and his attempt in 

 1891 to dissipate the chaos of interpretation of 

 nervous structure by inventing the term neurone 

 (Greek vevpou — German Neuron — anglice neurone), 

 are typical of Waldeyer 's metier. If he was not 

 a brilliant genius, he was a man of calm judgment 

 and exceptionally clear insight. It was these quali- 

 ties that made him so great a power in the modern 



