Wilhelm Roux
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Wilhelm Roux (9 June 1850 – 15 September 1924) was a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...
and pioneer of experimental
embryology Embryology (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, ''-logy, -logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the Prenatal development (biology), prenatal development of gametes (sex ...
.


Early life

Roux was born and educated in
Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...
,
German Confederation The German Confederation ( ) was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved ...
where he attended university and studied under
Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, Philosophy, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biology, marine biologist and artist ...
. He also attended university in Berlin and Strasbourg and studied under
Gustav Albert Schwalbe Gustav Albert Schwalbe, M.D. (1 August 1844 – 23 April 1916) was a German anatomist and anthropologist from Quedlinburg. He was educated at the universities of Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, University of Zurich, Zurich, and Universit ...
, Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen, and
Rudolf Virchow Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow ( ; ; 13 October 18215 September 1902) was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder o ...
. Although he was trained as a clinical doctor, he spent his career in experimental biology. His doctoral thesis on the embryological development of blood vessels was a seminal early study in biophysical modelling, a milestone in the study of the cardiovascular system.


Career and research

For ten years Roux worked in Breslau (now
Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...
), becoming director of his own Institute of Embryology in 1879. He was professor at Innsbruck, Austria from 1889 to 1895, then accepted a professorial chair at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Halle, a post he retained until 1921. Roux's research was based upon the notion of ''Entwicklungsmechanik'' or developmental mechanics: he investigated the mechanisms of functional adaptations of bones, cartilage, and tendons to malformation and disease. His methodology was to interfere with developing
embryo An embryo ( ) is the initial stage of development for a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sp ...
s and observe the outcome. Roux's investigations were performed mainly on frogs' eggs to research the earliest structures in amphibian development. His goal was to show Darwinian processes at work on the cellular level. Combined with the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's 1866 paper on heritable elements in peas, these results highlighted the central role of the chromosomes in carrying heritable material. In cell division the cell divides into two halves with equal number of chromosomes which are similar to parent cell and are diploid in nature. In 1885 Roux removed a section of the medullary plate of an
embryo An embryo ( ) is the initial stage of development for a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sp ...
nic
chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...
and tamed it in a warm saline solution for 13 days, establishing the principle of
tissue culture Tissue culture is the growth of tissue (biology), tissues or cell (biology), cells in an artificial medium separate from the parent organism. This technique is also called micropropagation. This is typically facilitated via use of a liquid, semi-s ...
which would later be taken up by Ross Granville Harrison and Paul Alfred Weiss. In 1888, Roux published the results of a series of defect experiments in which he took 2 and 4 cell frog embryos and killed half of the cells of each embryo with a hot needle. He reported that they grew into half-embryos and surmised that the separate function of the two cells had already been determined. This led him to propose his "
Mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...
" theory of epigenesis: after a few cell divisions the embryo would be like a mosaic, each cell playing its own unique part in the entire design. After a few years Roux's theory was refuted by the studies of his colleague
Hans Driesch Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (28 October 1867 – 17 April 1941) was a German biologist and philosopher from Bad Kreuznach. He is most noted for his early experimental work in embryology and for his neo-vitalist philosophy of entelechy. He has also ...
and later, with more precision,
Hans Spemann Hans Spemann (; 27 June 1869 – 9 September 1941) was a German embryologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1935 for his student Hilde Mangold's discovery of the effect now known as embryonic induction, an influenc ...
showed that, as a rule, Driesch's conclusions were correct, but that results like Roux's may be obtained after intervention in certain planes. Despite this early lapse into a fallacy of
reductionism Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical positi ...
, Roux's pioneering mechanical methodology was to prove most fruitful in 20th century biology. In 1913, Roux was named an honorary member of the American Association for Anatomy.


Works

* ''Der Kampf der Teile im Organismus'' (1881) * ''Beiträge zur Entwinckelungsmechanik des Embryo'' (1885) * ''Über die Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen'' (1890) * ''Geschichtliche Abhandlung über Entwicklungsmechanik'' (two volumes, 1895) * * * ''Die Entwicklungsmechanik'' (1905) * ''Terminologie der Entwicklungsmechanik'' (1912).


See also

*
Cell culture Cell culture or tissue culture is the process by which cell (biology), cells are grown under controlled conditions, generally outside of their natural environment. After cells of interest have been Cell isolation, isolated from living tissue, ...


References


Literature

* * * *


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Roux, Wilhelm 1850 births 1924 deaths 19th-century German zoologists Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences German cell biologists German embryologists 20th-century German zoologists