Popular interest, attended by some controversy, accompanied his parthenogenesis experiments, beginning in 1899, when he succeeded in bringing about the dEvelopment of sea urchin larvae from unfertilized eggs by exposing them to controlled changes in their environment. This work was later extended to the production of parthenogenetic frogs, which he raised to sexual maturity. Loeb's work was significant in showing that the initiation of cell division in fertilization was controlled chemically and was in effect separate from the transmission of hereditary traits.
Loeb also is remembered for his work on the physiology of the brain, animal tropisms (involuntary orientations), regeneration of tissue, and the duration of life. He is noted for his arguments in favour of mechanism, the belief that the phenomena of life can be explained in terms of physical and chemical laws. In his later years he made important contributions to the theory of colloidal behaviour of proteins.
M.D. Univ. of Strasbourg, 1884. He came to the United States in 1891 and taught at Bryn Mawr, the Univ. of Chicago, and the Univ. of California. From 1910 he was a member of the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller Univ.). Best known for his tropism theory and for his experiments in inducing parthenogenesis and regeneration by chemical stimulus, he also propounded the mechanistic philosophy that all ethics were the outgrowth of man's inherited tropisms. He was a founder and editor of the Journal of General Physiology. His works include The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912), Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilization (1913), and The Organism as a Whole (1916).
Daniel E. LOEB, eMail: loeb17@gmail.com
