Wilhelm Roux

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Wilhelm Roux
Grave of Wilhelm Roux in the Laurentius cemetery in Halle (Saale)

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

Life

Coming from a Huguenot family, his father Friedrich August Wilhelm Ludwig Roux was a university fencing master in Jena , Roux grew up in Jena and attended secondary school in Meiningen. From 1870 he studied medicine in Jena, Berlin and Strasbourg . First interrupted by military service in 1870/71, he continued his studies in Jena around 1873 and passed the medical state examination there in 1877/1878. He was scientifically shaped by Ernst Haeckel , Rudolf Virchow and Friedrich Daniel Recklinghausen during his student days .

Gustav Schwalbe encouraged him to do causal-morphological investigations, from which the dissertation "The Branches of Blood Vessels" (1878) emerged. Roux expanded the comparative developmental morphology of the Gegenbaur school by analyzing the causes of certain shapes. Roux named his causal-analytical research into the individual development of organisms with the word “ development mechanics” suggested to him by the physiologist Rudolf Heidenhain , whereby “mechanics” is not to be understood physically, but as a philosophical term that encompasses all causally determined events.

He found that the vessels of the liver are shaped by the hemodynamic forces of the bloodstream. From this, Roux derived the principle of functional adaptation (see stimulus level rule , also called the Roux principle ). His work “The Struggle of Parts in the Organism” (1881), in which he transferred Darwin's “Struggle for existence” to the intraorganismic relationships between cells and tissues, became programmatic for the new direction .

By analyzing highly functional organ designs (including trabeculae in the thigh bones, tail fin of the dolphin ), he succeeded in demonstrating a physiology of form formation, with which he reviewed the work of Georg Hermann von Meyer (1815-1892), Julius Wolff and August Rauber (1841-1917) continued to establish functional orthopedics . Roux's work took place in his Breslau years, where he worked from 1879 to 1889, most recently as director of the Institute for Development History and Mechanics of Development, which was founded at Friedrich Althoff's instigation.

In 1889 he followed a call to Innsbruck . In 1895 Roux went to Halle as director of the Anatomical Institute , where he died in 1924 of a stroke . His grave is in the Laurentius cemetery .

On July 19, 1901 ( matriculation no. 3148 ) he was elected a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . The Bavarian Academy of Sciences made him a corresponding member in 1911. In 1916 he also became a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1924 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

Achievements as a biologist

Roux became famous for his experiments on the developing frog germ. The program of "Development Mechanics of the Embryo" (1885) is based on them. For this new biological branch of science, Roux himself gave several definitions that were on the one hand more mechanistically oriented and on the other hand focused on the specific biotic life achievements.

Nevertheless, Roux is considered a typical representative of mechanicism in the history of biology , which is at least imprecise.

In 1887 Roux presented hemiembryons for the first time, that is, typical half frog larvae that he obtained by killing one of the first two daughter cells of the frog germ. According to this, development is an even distribution of the germinal qualities on the future organs (mosaic development) that begins with the first furrow division, which corresponds to his interpretation of the core division figures. But that was not Roux's last word, because some of his hemiembryos showed typical regenerative effects; the hemiembryo was completed, which Roux tried to explain through the hypothesis of a reserve idioplasm that is given to every daughter cell with every cell division.

In 1891 Hans Driesch obtained whole formations with sea ​​urchin eggs from the germs halved in the two-cell stage, which shook Roux's theory of ontogenetic development. The clarification of the difference between the results of Roux and Driesch was only possible much later, based on the work of Theodor Boveri , Alexander Gurwitsch and Paul Alfred Weiss as well as modern biochemical and genetic-molecular-biological research. From then on, Roux's scientific life was determined by the controversies with Driesch and Oskar Hertwig , which, however, was very conducive to the propagation of development mechanics, which was also known as developmental physiology.

In the autumn of 1894, Roux founded the " Archive for the Mechanics of Development of Organisms " , which appears to this day under a name that has changed several times.

The importance of Roux for biology lies in the establishment of an experimental biological concept. This made his work the starting point for modern biology.

Fonts

  • The struggle of the parts in the organism . Wilhelm Engelmann , Leipzig 1881 ( archive )
  • About the meaning of the nuclear division figures . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1883 ( archive )
  • About the time of determining the main directions of the frog embryo . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1883 ( archive )
  • Collected treatises on the mechanics of development of organisms . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1895, First Volume ( Archives ), Second Volume ( Archives )
  • Program and research methods of the developmental mechanics of organisms . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1897 ( archive )
  • About the self-regulation of living things . Archive for Development Mechanics of Organisms, Volume VIII, Issue 4, Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1902 ( Archive )
  • with Carl Correns , Alfred Fischel and Ernst Küster : Terminology of the Development Mechanics of Animals and Plants . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1912 ( archive )

literature

  • Stefan Kirschner :  Roux, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 149 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Stefan Kirschner: Wilhelm Roux (1850–1924) and his conception of development mechanics. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 67-80.
  • Reinhard Mocek: Wilhelm Roux and Hans Driesch - On the history of the developmental physiology of animals. Jena 1971
  • Hermann Stieve : Wilhelm Roux . In: Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder , Volume 2, 19th Century Life Pictures, Magdeburg 1927, pp. 452–461.
  • Ulrike Feicht: Wilhelm Roux (1850-1924) - his time in Halle , Diss. Halle 2008. Digitized
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Roux, Wilhelm. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1271 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Kirschner: Wilhelm Roux (1850-1924) and his conception of development mechanics. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 67-80, here: p. 67 (cited).
  2. ^ Member entry of Wilhelm Roux at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 27, 2016.
  3. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Roux (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on June 27, 2016.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Roux. Members of the predecessor academies. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on June 27, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Roux, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1924
Place of death Halle (Saale)