Early Death
He never delivered a lecture in his new position. In the first term after his appointment he was prevented from working by an attack of typhoid fever. Going to the Alps for his health, he was killed, probably on July 19, 1882, attempting the ascent of the Aiguille Blanche, Mont Blanc, at that time unscaled. Besides being a brilliant morphologist, Balfour was an accomplished naturalist. Huxley thought he was "the only man who can carry out my work", and that the deaths of Balfour and W.K. Clifford were "the greatest loss to science in our time". He was buried at Whittinghame, East Lothian.
Read more about this topic: Francis Maitland Balfour
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