Wilhelm Roux

Wilhelm Roux ( born June 9, 1850 in Jena, † September 15, 1924 in Halle ( Saale) ) was a German anatomist and embryologist.

Life

From a Huguenot family coming, the father Friedrich August Ludwig Wilhelm Roux was at Jena University fencing master, Roux studied in Jena, Berlin and Strasbourg medicine since 1873; it was coined by Ernst Haeckel, Rudolf Virchow and Friedrich Daniel Recklinghausen. Gustav Schwalbe encouraged him to causal- morphological studies, which showed the dissertation " The ramifications of the blood vessels " ( 1878). Roux extended the comparative evolutionary morphology of Gegenbaur school by analyzing the causes of certain mold designs. He noted that the vessels of the liver are formed by the hemodynamic forces of blood flow. It Roux led the principle of functional adaptation (see stimulus step rule, also known as Roux- principle). Programmatically for the new direction his writing was " The Battle of the parts in the organism " (1881 ), in which he transferred the Darwinian " struggle for existence " on the intra-organismic relations of cells and tissues. By analyzing highly functionally related body designs (among other things trabeculae in the femoral neck, tail fin of a dolphin ) succeeded in proving a physiology of morphogenesis, which he works Georg Hermann von Meyer ( 1815-1892 ), Julius Wolff and August Raubers ( 1841-1917 ) continued led to the creation of functional orthopedics. This work Roux fell into his Breslau years, where he worked from 1879 to 1889, most recently as director of the specially founded to Friedrich Althoff reason for Roux Institute for Developmental history and development of mechanics. In 1889 he followed a call to Innsbruck. 1895 went Roux as Director of the Anatomical Institute in Halle, where he died in 1924 of a stroke. His grave is located on the St. Lawrence Cemetery.

The Bavarian Academy of Sciences appointed him in 1911 to its corresponding member.

Services as a biologist

Roux asked in his study "On the importance of Kerntheilungsfiguren " ( Engelmann, Leipzig, 1883), why the nucleus is not a simple and abschnüre in the middle, but the core threads went through the " extensive form game" mitosis. He gave the first still hypothetical answer in the spirit of justified with this work chromosome theory of heredity. The nuclear chromatin he recognized the hereditary substance, were lined up in the " grain" of different quality yarns. The " parent thread " column by " division while maintaining the arrangement of longitudinally into two daughter strands ... "

Roux was made famous by the experiments on developing frog germ. On them, the program establishes a " developmental mechanics of the embryo" (1885 ). For this new branch of biological science Roux himself gave several definitions that were once more focused mechanistically, on the other hand the specific biotic performances took center stage. Nevertheless Roux applies in biology history as a typical representative of the mechanistic, which is at least inaccurate. 1887, Roux first hemi-embryos before, that is typical half frog larvae, which he got by killing one of the first two daughter cells of the frog embryo. Development is then an onset to the first cleavage division uniform distribution of seed qualities on the future organs (mosaic evolution ), which corresponded with his interpretation of nuclear division figures. But that did not Roux last word, because some of its hemi-embryos showed typical regenerative effects; the Hemiembryo completed what Roux sought by the hypothesis of a Reserveidioplasmas that will given each time a cell divides, each daughter cell to explain. 1891 was Hans Driesch with sea urchin eggs from the halved in the two-cell stage nuclei predominantly at once full training, which Roux theory of ontogenetic development was shaken. The clarification of the difference between the results of Roux and Driesch was not until much later, building on the work of Theodor Boveri, Alexander Gurwitsch and Paul Alfred Weiss and by biochemical and genetic- molecular-biological modern research. Roux scientific life was henceforth determined by the controversy with Driesch and Oskar Hertwig, which, however, was very conducive to promoting the development of mechanics, which was also referred to as developmental physiology. In the autumn of 1894 Roux founded the " Archives for development mechanics of organisms " that appears under multiple changing name to this day. The importance Roux for biology consists in the grounds of an experimental biological concept. Thus, his work became the starting point of modern biology.

Works

• Historical essay on development mechanism ( 2 volumes, 1895)
• The struggle of the parts in the body (1881 ) ( digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
• About the development of mechanics of organisms ( 1890)
• The development Mechanics ( 1905)
• Terminology of developmental mechanics (1912 )