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| German
embryologist who discovered the phenomenon of embryonic induction - the
influence exerted by various regions of an embryo that controls the development
of cells into specific organs and tissues. Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine 1935. Spemann was born in Stuttgart and studied at Heidelberg and Würtzburg. In 1908 he was appointed professor at Rostock. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology in Berlin 1914-19, and professor at Freiburg-im-Breisgau 1919-35. Spemann carried out his research on newt embryos. He found that embryos split in half at an early stage of development either died or developed into a whole embryo, but if they were divided at a later stage, half-embryos formed. Next he transplanted various embryonic parts to other areas of the embryo and to different embryos, and demonstrated that one area of embryonic tissue influences the development of neighbouring tissues. In another series of experiments, Spemann found that embryonic tissue from newts always gives rise to newt organs, even when transplanted into a frog embryo, and that frog tissue always develops into frog organs in a newt embryo. In the course of this work, Spemann pioneered techniques of microsurgery. |