Prof. Jerzy Stanislaw Alexandrowicz, who died at Plymouth on 28 October 1970, was one of the most distinguished histologists of the nervous system, whose series of memoirs upon invertebrate peripheral nervous systems stimulated much physiological and histo-logical research. He was born at Stoczki, in Poland, on 2 August 1886, and after matriculating in Warsaw studied medicine and natural science at the universities of Warsaw, Zurich, Munich, Heidelberg, Paris and Jena. He took his Ph.D. at Zurich under Lang, and his M.D. at Jena, under Biedermann, serving for a short period as a surgeon in the Military hospital at Belgrade, before being appointed to the department of descriptive anatomy at Wilno. He remained here during the war, and in 1918 served with the field hospitals coping with epidemic diseases brought to Poland from the East. He himself survived an attack of typhus. In 1919 he was appointed to organize and direct the department of descriptive anatomy at Wilno, and the next year rejoined the army to serve as the chief medical officer of a cavalry regiment in the fighting against Russia.

In 1920 he returned to Wilno, as head of the department of histology, and remained there until 1929, when he moved to Lwow, again as director of the department of histology, in the Academy of Veterinary medicine. In 1933 he became Pro-Rector of the Academy, and in 1936 Reaor, finally leaving the university in 1937 to head the scientific and university department of the Ministry of Education. He quickly became Under-secretary of State for Education, and in 1938 relinquished this post to spend six months at the Stazione Zoologica, Naples, where he had previously worked on three occasions.