Dr. Cornelis Beets, internationally renowned specialist of Indonesian Cainozoic molluscs, died on 28 July 1995. Born on 25 April 1916, he read geology at Leyden University. He obtained his PhD. in 1941 on a study of the geology of the Monferrato Hills between Torino and Murisengo (Italy). When working for his PhD., he had already started the study of the large collections of Cainozoic molluscs brought together by Professor K. Martin, the first director of the National Museum of Geology and Mineralogy at Leiden and his preceptor as far as the molluscs were concerned. He used the wartime years to study the Dutch Plio-Pleistocene molluscs, whilst employed by the Dutch National Coal Mines. After the Second World War he worked for some time in Haarlem at the famous Teylers Foundation, a seventeenth century museum of curiosities which includes a fine palaeontological collection. Soon, however, he started to work for the Royal Dutch Group, which brought him to many places, especially in Africa and the Americas. Although he could no longer pursue his mollusc studies, he kept a keen interest in them and spent part of his spare time in collecting as can be seen from his 1953 publications on Egyptian material. When he expressed the wish to terminate his career with the Royal Dutch for personal reasons, he was asked by the board of Leyden University to become director of the National Museum of Geology and Mineralogy, which he accepted after making definite agreements about future improvements. Although he was keen on renewing his studies of the Indonesian collections, which he had at hand here, his task as director, which he took very seriously, took up most of his time. It was only after his early retirement due to a disagreement with the board of the University that he could spend his time on the Indonesian Cainozoic molluscs again, which lead to several important publications on the subject. Failing eye-sight due to a stroke compelled him to give up his systematic studies, a fate he found difficult to bear. He intended to give a general review of the Indonesian Cainozoic molluscs using open nomenclature for the many new species he was now unable to describe. His illness and subsequent demise made it impossible for him to Finish this project, only a set of manuscript notes being left. The obituary lists his malacological papers and the new mollusc taxa he described. A complete list of his publications will be published in Scripta Geologica, in a more extensive obituary dealing with all facets of his varied career.