In memoriam Wolfgang Bargmann (1906--1978).

On June 20, 1978, Wolfgang BARGMANN, Professor emeritus of Kiel University and Chairman of the Department of Anatomy from 1946 to 1974, died at the age of seventy-two from cerebral hemorrhage. His name was well known to anatomists and biologists worldwide, not only for his outstanding accomplishments in the field of neurosecretion but also as the editor of Cell and Tissue Research (formerly Zeitschrift fur Zellforschung und mikroskopische Anatomie) and Handbuch der mikroskopischen Anatomie des Menschen, and as the author of the well-known textbook, Histologie und mikroskopische Anatomie des Menschen. As many as ten Japanese researchers, myself included, have, at one time or another, studied under him in Germany. He also had many friends and acquaintances in Japan through his three visits to Japan, including the 15th General Assembly of the Japan Medical Congress in 1959. So the news of his death came as a shock to many Japanese researchers. Prof. BARGMANN was born in Nuremberg on January 27, 1906. After graduating from Lessing Gymnasium for Humanistic Studies in Frankfurt-on-Main in 1926, he studied medicine at Universities in Frankfurt-on-Main, Munich, Vienna and Berlin. He received his doctor's degree in 1932 from Frankfurt University for his work on histology of renal glomerulus, and became an instructor there. He worked at Frankfurt University for only a year, but it was here that he came to know Ernst SCHARRER, who was then head of Ludwig Edinger Institute of Neurology, which was a part of the Department of Pathology at the University. This meeting led, years later, to Prof. BARGMANN's brilliant work on neurosecretion. At the time, SCHARRER was energetically studying the large nerve cells of the nucleus preopticus of teleosts. He had previously found that those cells contained numerous vacuoles and particles that could be stained with various dyes, and thought these represented neurosecretion. Prof. BARGMANN later wrote in reminiscence that on several occasions SCHARRER showed him his beautiful histologic preparations, which became firmly imprinted on his mind. In 1934 he went to Freiburg University, and when the chairman, Professor VON MOLLENDORFF, moved to Zurich, Prof. BARGMANN went with him to become a Privatdozent. There he was given a chance to write on endocrine organs other than the hypophysis in Histologie und mikroskopische Anatomie des Menschen, of which VON MOLLENDORFF was the editor. He wrote chapters on thyroid, parathyroid and Langerhans' islets (1939), and on the thymus and pineal body (1943). After VON MOLLENDORFF's death, Prof. BARGMANN took over the editorship.