Networking in the Naughty Nineties

Group Portrait outside the Old Schools, Cambridge 1898
A. J. Allen Wellcome Collection CC BY 4.0

In August 1898 Cambridge hosted both the International Congress of Physiology and the International Congress of Zoology. The group portrait was no doubt taken on 25 August 1898 after conferment of honorary doctorates on the physiologists (Franklin 1938) as well as Haeckel and Hubrecht from the zoology meeting. The ceremony was at the Senate House adjacent to the Old Schools that forms the backdrop to the portrait. Franklin mentions the Vice-Chancellor Alex Hill is in the background (recognizable from the droopy mustache).

Those shown (left to right) are:

Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) French cardiovascular physiologist also known for using chronophotography (a forerunner to cinematography) to study animals in motion. He collaborated with Anton Dohrn to document the movements of fishes.

Anton Dohrn (1840-1909) German entomologist and marine biologist who studied with Virchow, Haeckel and Gegenbauer at Jena. He was the founder and first director of the Zoological Station at Naples.

Camillo Golgi (1843-1926) Italian neuroscientist and biologist who also made a significant contribution to renal physiology. He discovered the Golgi apparatus a finding dismissed as an artefact by many contemporary scientists. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1906.

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) German zoologist whose work was hugely influential. His many interests included embryology and he famously argued that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

Ambrosius Hubrecht (1853-1915) Dutch zoologist and embryologist. He described placentation in insectivores (sensu lato) and a major paper on the placentas of tree shrew and tarsier was published in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Zoology (pp. 343-411).

Wilhelm Kühne (1837-1900) German muscle and nerve physiologist. He also studied the physiology of digestion and coined the term "enzyme."

Henry Pickering Bowditch (1840-1911) American physiologist who was the founding President of the American Physiological Society and Dean of Harvard Medical School. He had worked beside E. J. Marey in Claude Bernard's lab in Paris and later with Carl Ludvig in Leipzig. 

Alexander Hill (1856-1929) Vice-Chancellor of University of Cambridge 1897-1899 had been Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. He was a lecturer in physiology and in addition to his ceremonial rôle was a scientific member of the physiology congress.

Hugo Kronecker (1839-1914) German muscle physiologist then at Berne, Switzerland. Like Bowditch he had worked under Carl Ludwig. 

Franklin KJ. A short history of the International Congresses of Physiologists. Ann Sci 1938; 3: 241-335 with 15 Plates.