Anders Retzius

Who was Anders Retzius?

Anders Retzius, was a Swedish professor of anatomy and a supervisor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

He enrolled at Lund University in 1812 where he studied medicine, and alternated with studies in Copenhagen, until he in 1818 became a licensed doctor of medicine. Through his friendship with Jöns Jakob Berzelius, he as early as 1824 was appointed temporary professor of anatomy at the Karolinska Institute, an institute to which he dedicated much of his strength for many years. In 1830 he was also appointed temporary supervisor there, and in 1840 he was appointed both permanent professor and supervisor.

During the next decades he made many anatomical discoveries, for instance about the finer parts of the teeth, of the skull, of the muscles and of the nervous system. He was also an anthropologist, whose studies of the human cranium led to the classifications dolichocephalic and brachycephalic. He was considered to be very knowledgeable and was elected into many of the scientific academies at the time. He is credited with defining the cephalic index, which is the ratio of width to length of one's head.

Retzius was a polygenist. Retzius studied many different skull types from different races, because the skulls were so different from each race he believed that the races had a separate origin.