XXV111 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



native town, advised Weismann to follow the course which he had himself 

 pursued, first studying Medicine and leaving Chemistry as a later possibility. 

 So Weismann began in 1852 the four-years medical course at Gottingen, and 

 he always afterwards recognised that the Anatomy and Physiology there 

 studied formed an essential foundation for the Zoology to which his life was 

 devoted. 



Weismann next became for a year (1856-7) an assistant in the clinical 

 hospital at Eostoek and then for another year assistant to the Eostock 

 chemist Franz Schulze. Here he came to realise that Chemistry, in spite of 

 his strong inclination towards it, was not the science for which he was born. 

 He felt not only that he lacked many of the qualities essential for the 

 successful chemist, but that he possessed others, such as the sense of form and 

 order, which were unessential. In 1858, after visiting Vienna, he returned to 

 Frankfort and began to practise as a physician, occupying his abundant leisure 

 in histological research. In 1859 he entered the southern German army as a 

 surgeon and travelled in Italy, tending the wounded in the war which had 

 just been brought to an end by the battle of Solferino. His travels in this 

 year took him to Genoa, where he first met his future wife. Eeturning to 

 Frankfort towards the end of 1859 he soon tired of practice and accepted the 

 post of private physician to the Archduke Stephan of Austria, but before 

 taking up his residence at Schaumburg Castle on the Lahn, he studied (1860) 

 Zoology in Paris at the Jardin des Plantes, and above all spent two months 

 under Eudolph Leuckart at Giessen. Weismann always felt that these two 

 months were among the most inspiring of his life. During his two years 

 (1861-2)* with the Archduke he had plenty of leisure and was able to begin 

 and in all essentials to complete his first great work — on the development 

 and metamorphosis of insects. 



Weismann now considered that the time had come when he might offer 

 himself to a German University. On his 70th birthday he gave the reason 

 for his choice : — " When I first visited Freiburg, in the year 1860, the quiet 

 town, nestling among green vines, with its lime-planted rampart, the clear 

 streamlets in the streets and the splendid Minster, made such a charming- 

 impression upon me that I thought, ' If only one could live here ! ' And when, 

 three years later, the question arose of attaching myself to some German 

 University, my thoughts naturally turned to Freiburg." He joined the 

 University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau in 1863 as Privat-Docent in the 

 Medical Faculty, teaching Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, which had 

 been previously undertaken as secondary subjects by Prof. Fischer, the 

 Mineralogist. There was no proper Department of Zoology — only a single 

 room containing the scanty collections. But Weismann's energy and success 

 soon led to improvements, and in 1886 a Zoological Institute and Museum 

 were built. In 1866 he was elected Professor Extraordinarius, and in 1874f 

 Professor Ordinarius, being the first occupant of the Chair of Zoology in the 



* The years 1861-1863 are also given. 



t 1871 and 1873 are also given ; 1874 appears to be the most probable. 



