Walther Flemming

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Walther Flemming
Polytene chromosomes in a salivary gland cell by Chironomus, one of over 100 drawings in Flemming's main work Cell Substance, Nucleus and Cell Healing from 1882
Representation of mitotic figures in contributions to the knowledge of the cell and its life phenomena, Th. III (1882).
The original caption reads: Some of the many divisions seen from the human cornea . It is possibly the first published representation of human chromosomes.
Further mitotic figures from cell substance, nucleus and cell healing (1882)

Walther Flemming (born April 21, 1843 in Sachsenberg near Schwerin , † August 4, 1905 in Kiel ) was a German anatomist and cell biologist. He is considered the founder of cytogenetics . He coined the terms chromatin and mitosis in 1879 .

Life

Walther Flemming was born on the Sachsenberg , a sanatorium that was not yet part of the city of Schwerin , as the fifth child of the psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Flemming (1799-1880) and his second wife Auguste Winter. He attended the Gymnasium Fridericianum Schwerin (at that time the residence of the Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin ), where he passed the Abitur at Easter 1862. At high school he made the acquaintance of Heinrich Seidel , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. Flemming studied medicine in Göttingen , Tübingen , Berlin and at the University of Rostock , where he passed the state examination in 1868. In Tübingen he became a member of the Germania Tübingen fraternity . In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 he served as a military doctor. From 1873 to 1876 he worked as a lecturer at the (then still German-speaking) Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. After an unsuccessful application for a chair at the University of Königsberg , he was appointed to a professorship for anatomy at the University of Kiel in 1876, where he worked as director of the anatomical institute there until his death. In 1879 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . At Kiel University, Flemming, who was described by his contemporaries as a conflict-averse and peace-loving personality and who was popular with his students due to his mildness and benevolence, had to fight a number of fights with the university administration due to the inadequate financial and staffing of the anatomical institute, which was on the duration undermined his health. He developed an unspecified neurological disease that eventually forced him to give up office prematurely. He died in Kiel at the age of 62.

plant

Flemming was one of the pioneers in microscopic cytology . Using the newly available, industrially produced aniline dyes , he found a cell structure that could be stained with basophilic dyes and which he therefore named chromatin (from ancient Greek χρῶμα, chroma = color). He discovered that chromatin was associated with thread-like structures, the chromosomes (ie "color bodies") (this name was coined in 1888 by Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer ). At around the same time and independently of Flemming, the Belgian scientist Édouard van Beneden made similar observations. Flemming investigated the process of cell division and division of chromatin, for which he coined the term mitosis . He published his results in 1882 in the groundbreaking work Cell Substance, Nucleus and Cell Healing . On the basis of his discoveries, Flemming formulated the principle omnis nucleus e nucleo (German: Every cell nucleus arises from a cell nucleus), in analogy to Virchow's omnis cellula e cellula (German: Every cell arises from a cell).

The work of Gregor Mendel on heredity were not known Flemming, so he did not come to believe that it could be in the chromosomes of the genetic material. It was not until half a century later that the experiments by Oswald Theodore Avery , Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty proved that the DNA packed in the chromosomes was actually the genetic material. Nevertheless, Flemming's works (together with those of August Weismann , Matthias Jacob Schleiden , Theodor Schwann , Thomas Hunt Morgan and others) are counted among the most important in modern cell biology.

The German Society for Cell Biology has been awarding the Walther Flemming Medal since 2004 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Observations on the nature of the cell nucleus. In: Archives for microscopic anatomy. Volume 13, 1877, pp. 693-717.
  • Contributions to the knowledge of the cell and its life phenomena. In: Archives for microscopic anatomy. Volume 16, 1879, pp. 302-436, Volume 18, 1880, pp. 151-259, and Volume 20, 1881, pp. 1-86.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Seidel: The writer Heinrich Seidel and his famous childhood friend - Walther Flemming ( Memento from October 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). In: Zellbiologie aktuell , 30th year, edition 2/2004, p. 26 f. (PDF 317 kB)
  2. ↑ See the entry of Walther Flemming's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ^ K. Philipp: Burschenschaft Germania Tübingen, complete list of the members since the foundation December 12, 1816 . Stuttgart 2008.
  4. ↑ He first presented the processes he later called mitosis to the scientific public in 1878: Flemming, W. On the knowledge of the cell and its division phenomena. In: Writings of the Natural Science Association for Schleswig-Holstein 3 (1878), 23-27. (PDF; 1.4 MB)
  5. ↑ 100 Greatest Discoveries - Carnegie Institution ( Memento October 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ The Science Channel: 100 Greatest Discoveries: Biology ( Memento from November 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

literature

  • D. Lukács: Walter Flemming, discoverer of chromatin and mitotic cell division. In: Orvosi hetilap. 122, 6, 1981, pp. 349-350 (Hungarian) PMID 7015236 .
  • Nicolà Latronico: Heredity, constitution and diathesis. In: Minerva Pediatr. 52 (1-2), pp. 81-115, PMID 10829597 .
  • CS Breathnach: Biographical sketches No. 18 - Flemming. In: Irish medical journal. 75, 6, 1982, p. 177, PMID 7050007 .
  • N. Paweletz: Walther Flemming: pioneer of mitosis research. In: Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 2, 1, 2001, pp. 72-75, PMID 11413469 .
  • W. Flemming: Contributions to the knowledge of the cell and its life phenomena. In: Arch. Microscope. Anat. 16, 1878, pp. 302-436 and 18, 1880, pp. 151-289. Reprinted in English translation in: J. Cell Biol. 25, 2007, pp. 3-69 ( PDF ).
  • EA Carlson: The Analysis of Mitosis Shifts Attention to the Chromosomes. In: Mendel's Legacy. The Origins of Classical Genetics. CSHL Press, 2004, ISBN 0-87969-675-3 , pp. 24-25.
  • PA Hardy, H. Zacharias: Walther Flemming and the mitosis: The contribution of his first years in Kiel. In: Schr. Naturwiss. Ver. Schleswig-Holst. 70, 2008, pp. 3–15 ( online , PDF file; 624 kB)
  • Georg Uschmann:  Flemming, Walther. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 241 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Flemming, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anatomist and cell biologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1843
PLACE OF BIRTH Sachsenberg near Schwerin
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1905
Place of death Kiel