[The man on the portrait]

Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry 1911. During the preceding year a rumour had circulated in Stockholm that she had had an affaire with one of her assistants. She received a letter, in which she was told that there had been strong opposition to her election not on scientific but moral grounds, and that she should not go to Stockholm, because nobody could forsee what reactions her appearance at the prize ceremony could evoke. Emil Kleen, a man of violent temper and radical opinions, reacted strongly to these rumours. He wrote a paper, with a violent attack on Gustaf Retzius, previous professor of Histology at Karolinska Institutet. Rightly or wrongly he suspected him to be the author of the infamous letter. Retzius is described as a dilletant in scientific matters, as a "sexual hyena" and a garroulus old man. This portrait of Retzius is of course most unfair, but the portrait of Emil Kleen by the famous swedish artist Bruno Liljefors is a masterpiece and one of the most valuable of the Swedish Medical Association.