Address of the President, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, at the Anniversary Meeting, November 30, 1931

It is right that at our Anniversary Meeting we should have in mind the losses that our Fellowship has suffered during the year that has just passed. We have to deplore to-day the deaths of no less than four of our distinguished Foreign Members, together with fourteen Fellows of the Society. Albert Auguste Toussaint Brachet, of Brussels, was a distinguished leader in the science of embryology. He was one of the pupils of van Beneden and carried on traditions derived from that master of the subject, though on lines of his own. His earlier work dealt chiefly with the morphological facts of development, but he later made important contributions to experimental embryology. His researches were specially concerned with the early stages of development in the amphibia, and his work threw important light upon the problem of localisation in the developing egg. His later interests and contributions were concerned with what may be described as the physiological factors and conditions which initiate development. He was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1928.