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WEISMANN, AUGUST (1834– )

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Originally appearing in Volume V28, Page 499 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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WEISMANN, See also:AUGUST (1834– ) , See also:German biologist, was See also:born at See also:Frankfort-on-See also:Main, on the 17th of See also:January 1834, and studied See also:medicine in See also:Gottingen. After spending three years in See also:Rostock, he visited successively See also:Vienna (1858), See also:Italy (1859) and See also:Paris (186o), and from 1861 to 1862 he acted as private physician to the See also:archduke See also:Stephen of See also:Austria at Schaumburg See also:Palace. In 1863 he went to See also:Giessen to devote himself to biological study under Leuckart, and in 1866 he was appointed extra-See also:ordinary See also:professor of See also:zoology at See also:Freiburg, becoming ordinary professor a few years later. His earlier See also:work was largely concerned with purely zoological investigations, one of his earliest See also:works dealing with the development of the See also:Diptera. Microscopical work, however, became impossible to him owing to impaired eyesight, and he turned his See also:attention to wider problems of biological inquiry. Between 1868 and 1876 he published a See also:series of papers in which he attacked the question of the variability of organisms; these were published in an See also:English See also:translation by R. Meldola in 1882, under the See also:title Studies in the Theories of Descent, See also:Darwin himself contributing a See also:preface in which the importance of the nature and cause of variability in individuals was emphasized. Weismann's name, however, is best known as the author of the germ-plasm theory of See also:heredity, with its accompanying denial of the transmission of acquired characters—a theory which on its publication met with consider-able opposition, especially in See also:England, from orthodox Darwinism. A series of essays in which this theory is expressed was collected and published in an English translation (Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, vol. i. 1889, vol. ii. 1892). Weismann published many other works devoted to the exposition of his biological views, among them being See also:Die Dauer See also:des Lebens; Vererbung; Ewigkeit des Lebens; Die Kontinuitat des Keimplasmas als Grundlage See also:Liner Theorie der Vererbung; Das See also:Keim-plasma; Die Allmacht der Naturzuchtung; Aussere Einflilsse als Entwicklungsreize; Neue Gedanken zur Vererbungsfrage, and Germinal-Selektion.

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account of his doctrines the reader is referred to the articles on HEREDITY, REGENERATION and See also:REPRODUCTION.

End of Article: WEISMANN, AUGUST (1834– )

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