Skip to main content

August weismann Biography

August Weismann

(Frankfurt on the Main, 1834-Freiburg im Breisgau, 1914) German biologist, famous for his theory of germ plasm.He studied at the University of Göttingen, after which he worked for some time in a hospital in Rostock.In order to expand his training, in 1858 he moved to Vienna, where he stayed for a year; later he went to Italy and the following year to Paris.In 1863 he began his studies in zoology at the University of Freiburg, where he also taught between 1866 and 1912; he was professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at this university.He also directed the Museum of Zoology.

August Weismann

His first research was devoted to experimental zoology and published valuable works on the development of Diptera and on the sexuality of hydromedusae.But his most important investigations in the field of biology focused on the origin of species, and led him to develop the Germ Plasma Theory of Heredity , which denied Lamarck's concept that Acquired characters are transmitted from father to son in just one generation, although he admitted Darwin's principle of natural selection.

Weismann supported the theory that the body is divided into germ cells, which can transmit hereditary information, and somatic cells (somatoplasm), which cannot; and that germ plasm, formed by the fusion of the ovum with the sperm, establishes a solid continuity through the generations.Therefore, a new conception of biological inheritance was developed based on the immortality of the germ plasm, which can be related to the rediscovery of Mendel's laws and the experiments of Hugo de Vries.

Later, germ plasm was identified with chromosomes and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and the reduction of genetic material in progenitor cells (meiosis) was also verified.He wrote numerous works in which he made known the results of his studies.It is worth mentioning some such as Studies on the theory of descent (1875-76), Die Kontinuität des Keimplasmas als Grundlage einer Theorie der Vererbung ('The continuity of the germ plasm as a basis of a theory of heredity ', 1885), Über Germinal-selektion (' On germinal selection ', 1896) and Studien zur Deszendenztheorie (' Studies on heredity ' , 1902).His interest in zoology is reflected in the works The embryology of Diptera (1865) and The origin of the sex cells of the hydromedusae.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The "Cosmic Year", the best tool to understand remote History

When we talk about dinosaurs , about the history of life in the Land , or of the evolution of man we refer to quantities of time very, very large, so large that it is very difficult for us to understand the dimension that these periods have.That is why I propose you to perform a very interesting exercise that will open your head to interpret the long time in depth. The best way to understand these figures of such great years was devised by the scientist Carl Sagan. Through book The Dragons of Eden and the television series Cosmos, the so-called " cosmic year" "The exercise is very simple: we compare the evolution of the universe with an o. So, what Sagan proposes is to think that on January 1 at 00 hours of the Cosmic Year corresponds to the origin of the universe : the Big Bang (15,000 million years ago).And the last second of December 31 is the current moment.Then, simply what is done is to draw equivalences and date the...

Giacomo Jaquerio Biography

Giacomo Jaquerio (Turin, c .1375-?, 1453) Italian painter.He was the most important of the active artists in the Duchy of Savoy during the first half of the s.XV.While his work may focus on international Gothic, it did not actually conform to the dominant trend in Lombardy of his time, but instead embraced the realism of Burgundian artists.Most of his work is located in the Abbey of San Antonio (Raverso), the fruit of a remarkable career that exerted great influence in Piedmont.

Agustin Lara Biography

Agustín Lara (Agustín Lara Aguirre y Pino; Tlacotalpán, México, 1897-Mexico City, 1970) Composer of Mexican melodic song.Due to his self-taught training, his prolific production and his undeniable success, Agustín Lara has been considered on numerous occasions as the Irving Berlin of Mexican song. Agustín Lara Known as El Flaco de Oro, there are countless songs composed by this musician who have gained an everlasting fame: Granada (immortalized by the tenor Mario Lanza), the chotis Madrid , Creole Night , La Cumbancha , Noche de ronda , Only once , Palmera or María bonita (written for his wife, actress María Félix) are just some of the most famous. Adapted to numerous languages ​​and sung in the most different styles, the success of these songs in the Old and New World won their author the highest honors and general recognition.Along with melodic song, Lara also excelled at composing film music; His is, for example, the score for Santa , one of the first sound film...

Guillaume de l’Hôpital Biography

Guillaume de l'Hôpital (Guillaume de l'Hôpital, Marquis de Sainte-Mesme; Paris, 1661- id ., 1704) French mathematician.A military man by profession, he became interested in the study of mathematics under the influence of Bernoulli and carried out the first complete exposition of the infinitesimal calculus in his work Analysis of the infinitely small for the understanding of curved lines ( 1696).The L'Hôpital rule allows to eliminate certain indeterminacies in the passage to the limit of the quotient of two functions, applying the differential calculus.

Independence of Mexico: the bell of Morelos

We continue to remember the long journey of the people of Mexico in their struggle for independence.In our previous article we saw how the process of the Independence of Mexico began, under the influence Miguel Hidalgo, a historical character central to the history of Mexico .I propose now to continue analyzing a new stage of the war, with Jose Maria Morelos as leader.will lead to the Declaration of the Independence of Mexico, on November 6, 1813. By mid-1811, the independence revolution was at a critical moment.Its main leaders had been killed. Allende's troops and Hidalgo were practically disjointed. Realists became stronger under the command of Calleja .But the story was about to take a momentous turn. The second stage of the Mexican Independence War is characterized by extensive struggles in the South of the territory.Alli forces were commanded since the beginning of the war by Jose Maria Morelos .Like Hidalgo, Morelos was a priest.Other importan...

Tibet - History and Culture of Tibet in the 20th century

As we said in the previous article when we talked about the new Chinese repression in the Tibet , this region has lived through centuries of continuous invasions that have only served to obscure its memory and slowly exterminate its culture. The first Mongols, the English, the Indians and the Chinese , have razed their lands, devastating an already poor population in itself, and the monasteries and the Tibetans themselves are suffering the end of their pure race, because by their blood they already run the traces of the different empires that have dominated it to the point that two thirds of their population is Chinese. Little Tibet is known before the tenth century.Perhaps it was in those centuries when this region could be considered totally independent.But it was in the eleventh century II when they suffered their first invasion: that of the Mongol Empire .While it is true that during the centuries that the Mongol Empire dominated Tibet, the country's government enjo...

Carmen balcells Biography

Carmen Balcells (Santa Fe de Segarra, Lleida, 1930-Barcelona, ​​2015) Spanish literary agent who with her innovative management radically modified the market for hiring, promoting and publishing books in the Spanish language. Carmen Balcells Born into a family of rural owners, she studied business expertise and at the age of twenty-four she settled in Barcelona with her family, where she worked as a secretary until that her friend Joaquim Sabrià recommended her to the exiled Romanian writer Vintila Horia, owner of the literary agency ACER, administrator of foreign authors for Spain. In this agency he began to work as a correspondent until, in 1960, Vintila Horia won the Goncourt Prize and moved to Paris.Carmen Balcells then decided to establish herself on her own: she founded her own literary agency in the rental apartment where she lived, and in a few years she revolutionized the international map of publishing.Meanwhile, in 1961 she had married Luis Palomares, with whom she ...

Camilo Ponce Enriquez Biography

Camilo Ponce Enríquez (Quito, 1912-1976) Ecuadorian politician, lawyer and leader of the conservative party.He was President of the Republic during the constitutional period of 1956-1960, the first conservative after 64 years of liberal, prosocialist and populist regimes. Camilo Ponce Enríquez After completing his first studies at the San Gabriel school, run by the Jesuits of Quito, Camilo Ponce Enríquez followed higher studies at the Central University of Ecuador in the same city, and complemented them at the University of Santiago de Chile, where in 1938 he obtained the title of lawyer.Later he also did a doctorate in law from the University of Southern (California).He was a founding member of the Ecuadorian Democratic Alliance (ADE). He also founded the newspapers Democracia (1942) and El Heraldo (1945), and the journalistic company Unión Católica S.A.(1949).In 1952 he organized the Christian Social Movement, which would later become a political party.He held the chair ...

The Beagle Conflict: The War That Didn't Become

The conflict over the Beagle Channel was a border dispute between Chile and Argentina that had begun in the early 19th century . But in the 1970s the conflict escalated, especially since the Arbitration Award of 1977. It was a spark with two piles of dust: dictatorships military of Videla in Argentina and of Pinochet in Chile .We'll tell you the story of this conflict that was very close to ending a war that-fortunately-never happened. The vicissitudes of diplomacy between Argentina and Chile by the Beagle Channel there were many, since this dispute began, at the end of the 19th century.But to go back to the conflict of the 70s, we must begin our story with the firm from Agreement on Arbitration in the Beagle of July 22, 1971, in Londres . The Agreement on Arbitration in the Beagle it was an arbitration commitment that requested the determination of the Argentine-Chilean boundaries in the Beagle channel and the adjudication of the Picton, New ...