Dr. Penard and America

JOHN 0. CORLISS I‘ale Lrniversity, New Haven, Connecticut

URISG A NOST memorable visit with the late Dr. Eugine Penard one day in the summer of

1932, in Geneva, the grand old man of keen eye, steady hand and many tongues told me, among other interest- ing things. how he enjoyed reading -4merican books. Favorites in his little library in his simple room in the Kermont Home were a number of historical novels by Dorothy Gardiner, now of New Tork City, includ- ing her West of the River. This part of our visit resulted eventually in a pleasant exchange of corres- pondence between Miss Gardiner, daughter of Dr. Penard’s closest friend in America in former years, and myself.

Dr. Georges Deflandre has written a full account of the colorful life and scientific achievements of Eugine Penard above. Here I should like to say just a little about this remarkable protozoologist’s contacts with =\merica, basing much of my information on the delightful accounts in letters from Miss Gar- diner, with her kind permission.

It was in Switzerland in the late 70’s that Eugine Penard and John Gardiner, a student of heredity who had studied with Huxley and worked with Darwin, first chanced to meet. “My father and Penard were a part of the group of young scientists in the late years of the 19th century who were spinning the world on a new axis,” writes hIiss Gardiner. Some years later, after Gardiner had moved to America and had become the first head of the Department of Biology a t the University of Colorado a t Boulder. he invited his young friend Penard to visit him. “ I t took little per- suasion, for Penard was always a man of curiosity who liked new places. The position which my father had hoped to find for him, unfortunately, did not materialize. and Penard returned (after about two years, I think. with part of the time spent in Califor- nia) to Europe. He always regretted this, for he loved Colorado and realized later that he would have been able to find a position in time. but he was young and

poor and I think refused offers of help,” relates Miss Gardiner.

Students of the Sarcodina will recall Penard’s precise work of 1891 (Am. Naturalist, 25, 1070-1083) which commences, “During a stay which I made this year in the mountains of the state of Colorado I gave some of my time to the study of the fresh-water Rhizopods. comparing them with those I had observed in various regions of Europe . . . .” A great admirer of Leidy’s (1879) beautiful monograph, Penard did, I think, take a little delight in his own discovery of many species a t an altitude (12,000 and 12,500 feet) some 2,000 feet higher than that at which Leidy or anyone else had previously found rhizopods. Miss Gardiner has given me, among other “Penardiana,’’ a fine sketch by Penard of Gold Hill, Colorado. Most of his sarco- dinid collections were made in the vicinity of Caribou, north of Boulder.

Miss Gardiner has been corresponding with Dr. Penard for the last 12 or 15 years. Although they never met, since he did not revisit America, he “redis- covered” her existence through her books and guessed that she was the daughter of his old friend John Gardiner, who had passed away in 1901. Miss Gar- diner has written me an interesting account of Penard’s stay in Russia as tutor for the young Prince Youssou- poff, who plotted the murder of Rasputin, but as this fascinating story and its sequel is well told above by Dr. Deflandre I shall not repeat i t here.

Dr. Penard’s greatest pleasure in his last year and a half of life came from his election as first Honorary Member of our Society of Protozoologists. I n a letter he sent me on the subject, in which he also thanked me for a birthday gift of The Sea Aroziiid Us and some ciqars (the smoking of which was included in his formula for longevity! ) , he wrote with perceptible emotion. “This announcement . . . was for me an immense satisfaction for such an honorable proof of what I might have done in protozoan studies . . . And it came from America!”

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