Theodor Boveri

Theodor Heinrich Boveri ( born October 12, 1862 in Bamberg, † October 15, 1915 in Würzburg ) was a German biologist.

1880-1882 described Eduard Strasburger and Theodor Boveri the constancy of the chromosome number in different ways ( this is typical for the species ) and the individuality of the chromosomes.

In 1888 he coined the term centrosome. In 1904 he founded after Walter Sutton chromosome theory of heredity.

Life

Married Theodor Boveri was with the American Marcella O'Grady, who belonged to the first generation of women who gained access to universities in the United States. Marcella O'Grady, who taught, among others, as a lecturer at the prestigious Vassar College, he got to know in the summer of 1896, when she visited the mediation of their tutor Edmund B. Wilson Würzburg, where Theodor Boveri lived and worked. The German journalist Margret Boveri (1900-1975) was Theodor Boveri's only daughter. His brother Walter Boveri was a renowned Swiss industrialist.

Boveri his PhD under Carl von Kupffer in Munich. He then became an assistant to Richard Hertwig and habilitated in Munich towards the body. On March 22, 1893, he was at the University of Würzburg, just thirty years old, was appointed full professor of zoology and comparative anatomy.

Boveri suffered the longer a serious illness, which he characterized himself: " The day before yesterday a Ascaris lumbricoides (male ) I come off with such a strong brown - green colored bowel that I suspect, have the beast, perhaps in the biliary tract had run. overheads when the critters with whom one has engaged in, is now dealing with a self. " Thus the Ascaris, which allowed Boveri important scientific achievements, eventually caused his death.