Alfred Sherwood Romer, 28 December 1894 - 5 November 1973

Abstract

The death on 5 November 1973 of Alfred Sherwood Romer (‘Al' to all but the most formal), following by only a little more than three months that of D. M. S. Watson, marks almost the end of an era in vertebrate palaeontology. Yet however fully we may mourn ‘Al' Romer, those who knew him will keep cherished memories of a man who was not only a great scientist, but also a man of zest, wit and humour, a gifted teacher who was an example and a stimulus to many a young worker in his field, an excellent organizer with deep humanity—in short, a friend and a leader with a strong ‘anti-stuffed-shirt’ complex. He was born at White Plains, N.Y., on 28 December 1894, the son of Harry Houston Romer and Evalyn Sherwood Romer. A younger sister died in infancy. One of Al's delights was in history, whether of places, of families, or indeed of ideas. He has recorded that of the two family names he bore, the original Jacob Romer arrived in New Amsterdam from Zürich and settled in America in the Hudson Valley near Tarrytown about 1725. His mother’s ancestry stemmed from the young son of the widow of a British soldier who settled in Vermont about 1815. He has recorded his ancestry as otherwise ‘about three-fourths New England Puritan’ of the 1628-40 migration and ‘one-fourth Scotch-Irish immigration of the middle 1700s’. Many of them became Quakers, and Al's strong character and his willingness to carry heavy loads of work and responsibility, no less than his usual dark suit and black necktie, seemed to epitomize the influence of his ancestry—until the warm and joyous personality gave the observer a corrective to a common cliché of the New England Puritan.