In memoriam J. H. Vernhout

JOHANNES HENDRIK VERNHOUT was born at Wassenaar (near The Hague) on October 24, 1866. He studied biology (and at first medicine too, becoming a Bachelor of Medicine in 1899) at the University of Utrecht, where he took his doctor’s degree in 1894. His thesis, written in Dutch, dealt with ”Placentation in the Mole”. Before 1894 he had already been teaching biology for a short period at the secondary school of Amersfoort. Throughout the year 1894 he was curator of the Natural History Museum of the University of Utrecht, but I have been unable to find out what his occupation was during the next year. From 1896 to 1899 VERNHOUT served as a botanist at the Botanical Gardens of Buitenzorg, Java. Then, in 1900, he was for a short time teacher of biology at the ”gymnasium” (grammar school) of Zutphen, but still in the same year he went to Leiden, where, until 1907, he assisted professor G. C. J. VOSMAER in his studies on the Porifera of the Siboga Expedition. From 1904 to 1907 he was an assistant at the Zoological Laboratory of Leiden University, of which laboratory VOSMAER was the director. In 1908 he was appointed curator at the State Herbarium in Leiden and from 1909 to October 1, 1916, VERNHOUT was curator of the Molluscan Department of the Natural History Museum in the same town. After his retirement VERNHOUT settled in Middelburg, where he had also spent part of his youth. There he was, from 1918 to 1923, in charge of one or more departments of the Natural History Cabinet of the museum of the ”Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen” (Zeeland Society of Sciences). From 1934 onwards VERNHOUT lived at Oostkapelle, also on the island of Walcheren. War conditions forced him to leave that island and to move to the eastern part of our country, where he settled temporarely at Diever (Drenthe). So he was far away when in October 1944 his library and some other rooms of his house at Oostkapelle were inundated after the bombardment of the dikes of Walcheren by the Royal Air Force. After the war, when the dikes had been repaired and Walcheren became more hospitable soil again, VERNHOUT returned to Oostkapelle, where he lived until his death on August 3, 1955.