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WOLFF, CASPAR FRIEDRICH (1733-1794)

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Originally appearing in Volume V28, Page 774 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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WOLFF, CASPAR See also:FRIEDRICH (1733-1794) , See also:German anatomist and physiologist, justly reckoned the founder of See also:modern See also:embryology, was See also:born in 1733 at See also:Berlin, where he studied See also:anatomy and See also:physiology under the See also:elder J. F. Meckel. He graduated in See also:medicine at See also:Halle in 1759, his thesis being his famous Theoria generationis. After serving as a surgeon in the Seven Years' See also:War, he wished to lecture on anatomy and physiology in Berlin, but being refused permission he accepted a See also:call from the empress Catharine to become See also:professor of those subjects at the See also:academy of St See also:Petersburg, and acted in this capacity until his See also:death there in 1794. While the theory of " See also:evolution " in the crude sense—i.e. a See also:simple growth in See also:size and unfolding of See also:organs all previously existent in the germ—was in See also:possession of the See also:field, his researches on the development of the alimentary See also:canal in the chick first clearly established the converse view, that of epigenesis, i.e. of progressive formation and differentiation of organs from a germ primitively homogeneous. He also largely anticipated the modern conception of embryonic layers, and is said even to have foreshadowed the See also:cell theory.

End of Article: WOLFF, CASPAR FRIEDRICH (1733-1794)

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WOLFF, JOSEPH (1795–1862)

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