Renate Burgess

Renate Burgess, born Renate Ruth Adelheid Bergius (2 August 1910 – 15 August 1988) was a British art and medical historian and curator. From 1964 to 1980, she was the curator at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, responsible for catalogues and exhibitions of their extensive medical print, painting and photograph holdings. She earned a reputation as the world's leading expert in medical portraiture.

Early life Renate Burgess was born Renate Ruth Adelheid Bergius on 2 August 1910 in Hanover, Germany to Friedrich Bergius, a chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1931, and Margarethe (Sachs) Bergius. Burgess pursued studies art history, archeology and French philology in Berlin and Munich, working with art historian Wilhelm Pinder and earning a Ph.D. in art history in 1935 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Burgess moved to England with very little money in 1938, having only been allowed to take 10 Marks with her. A dedicated researcher who frequently spent off-hours in the British Library, Burgess was also recognized for her identification of painters behind notable works like St. Elizabeth Visiting a Hospital (an Adam Elsheimer painting from 1598), and a portrait of the surgeon Richard Wright (painted by his brother Joseph Wright of Derby in 1753), as well as for exhibitions she organized at the Wellcome Institute. Notable shows included Medicine in 1815, The History of Pharmacy, Chinese Medicine, The Child in History and particularly Dickens and Medicine. The latter, mounted in 1970, drew accolades from medical as well as literary scholars.

Burgess retired in 1980, though she continued working in an emeritus capacity at the institute.

Death Burgess married Hans Burgess (né Juliusburger) in 1950; the marriage ended in divorce. Burgess died in London on 15 August 1988.