---
title: "Francisc Rainer"
chunk: 3/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisc_Rainer"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:18.807273+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In 1920, Rainer was employed by the new anatomy and embryology department set up at Bucharest University. Affected by deafness, attributed to his long-term exposure to formaldehyde, he continued to work at the same pace, but was noticeably withdrawn from public life. The anatomy section existed only in name when Rainer took over. Rainer took personal charge of furnishing it, in the end setting up a large collection of craniums and full skeletons that earned the respect of Western colleagues such as Eugène Pittard, Carleton S. Coon, Henri Victor Vallois, and Kurt Warnekros. He was seconded by his devoted disciple and godson, the endocrinologist Ștefan Milcu (he eventually left Rainer's team in 1932, after developing an allergy to formaldehyde). Other important presences among Rainer's students and collaborators were George Emil Palade and Vintilă Ciocâlteu, distinguished for their work in the United States. At various intervals, the team also included surgeon Ion Țurai, pharmacologist Alfred Teitel, embryologist Benedict M. Menkeș, and anatomist Zalman Iagnov.
After his move, Rainer began expanding the scope of his contribution, and passed on to his students a particular view of science, decisively materialistic, rationalist, and anti-metaphysical. In particular, Rainer rejected the intuitionism of Henri Bergson, which had enjoyed a surge in popularity. His intellectual heroes and models of researchers included Claude Bernard, Rudolf Virchow, and especially Goethe. The physician and left-wing political figure Ion Vitner writes that Rainer's understanding of the human body, heavily influenced by the work of Wilhelm Roux, centered on "life", "movement", "function", and ultimately "ontogenesis", rather than on the "static catalog" of 19th-century anatomy.
This worldview seeped into Rainer's research, which assumed the existence of a "precise genetic program" in man's somatic development. He centered his attention on correlating the activities of various organs and their understanding as "functional structures". This helped him and his students make groundbreaking discoveries in area such as the dura mater, cranial nerves, the lateral aortic lymph nodes, and the hypophyseal portal system. In his study of spondylopathy, Rainer personally documented the existence of arthritis in the atlas.
Physician I. Spielmann describes Rainer admiringly as a "polyhistor" with "a passionate image of what truth is". According to a student, the historian of medicine Gheorghe Brătescu, Rainer was an outstanding pedagogue and public speaker, whose anatomy lessons were highly inspirational, but whose neglect for his public appearance could alienate young people. As he writes: "After showing us that medical science is one of observation, but that in practice it involves continuous experimentation, and why it is more of a craft that demands medical instinct, Rainer provided us with the one effective measure to sustain it: uninterrupted self-examination". Vitner also noted Rainer's preference for orality, attributing it to an "extraordinary fear of the written word". Meanwhile, other specialists rejected Rainer's ideas and approach. According to anatomist Victor Papilian (whom Rainer had denounced as a plagiarist), Rainer's was "a sterile and envious school" of self-proclaimed "geniuses". According to Papilian, Rainer moved freely between subjects outside of his competence, including the paleontology of Leonardo da Vinci and the latest discoveries in astronomy.
Despite his progressive withdrawal from public life, Rainer was slowly being discovered as a public intellectual. In addition to his work at the university, he was again involved with Viața Românească, and, from 1920, was one of the magazine's trustees. He taught kinesiology at the Physical Education Institute, and artistic anatomy at the School of Fine Arts. His lectures in anthropology, hosted by the Physical Education Institute from 1923, are believed to be the oldest form of anthropological education in Romania. Also that year, Rainer made a noted contribution to biological anthropology, publishing his finds on the medieval princely remains dug up in Curtea de Argeș. He pursued other such investigations into the Romanian past, including the craniometry of Michael the Brave and the description of ancient tombs dug up at Turnu Severin.
Pursuing her own career in Bucharest hospitals, Marta was later a personal physician of Helen of Greece, wife of King Carol II of Romania. In their personal life, the Rainers experienced disappointment: having received her education in Romania, Sofia Rainer left for England, to attend the University of Bristol; she grew estranged from the family after her marriage to an Englishman, Archibald Philip Laing Gordon.

=== Biological anthropology ===