Abstract
DR. GUSTAV MAGNUS RETZIUS, a celebrated Swedish biologist, was born at Stockholm on October 17, 1842, the son of an eminent anatomist. He received his medical education at Uppsala and Stockholm, and qualified at Lund in 1871. Six years later he became 'extraordinary' professor of anatomy at the Caroline Institute at Stockholm. In 1889 he was appointed full professor, but resigned in the following year in order to devote himself entirely to scientific research, particularly in anatomy and anthropology, for which he travelled extensively in Europe and America. Most of his work was concerned with naked eye and microscopical anatomy, but he also made studies in embryology, anthropology, zoology and botany, so that he was a biologist in the fullest sense of the term. Between 1876 and 1906 he published six illustrated folios, the first of which was devoted to the anatomy of the nervous system and connective -tissue, the second and third to anthropology, the fourth and fifth to the brain of man and monkeys and the sixth to the organ of hearing. His name has been given to parallel brown lines crossing the enamel-prisms of the teeth seen on cutting the enamel, and, with that of Key, to two foramina in the brain. He was awarded many prizes for his work, including the Montyon Prize of the Institut de France. He died on July 21, 1919.
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Dr. Gustav Retzius. Nature 150, 459 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150459e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150459e0