Pioneer in a peculiar science

The first distinguished person I ever met told me that he preferred funerals to weddings. ‘Weddings,’ he said, ‘are so final.’

It is true that many changes take place to the human body after death, practically all of them of surpassing unpleasantness. Perhaps that is why no one before Professor Bass had the idea of observing the decomposition of human corpses under various conditions (or at least the determination to carry it out).