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
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or death:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Farewell deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye liv’d, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my sent be good, I care not, if
It be as short as yours.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)