author
Jacques Loeb
1859–1924
A pioneering experimental biologist, he became famous for showing that life processes could be studied and manipulated in the laboratory. His work on animal behavior, regeneration, and artificial parthenogenesis helped shape modern physiology and embryology.
1 Audiobook
The Organism as a Whole, from a Physicochemical Viewpoint
by Jacques Loeb
About the author
Born in Mayen, Prussia, on April 7, 1859, Jacques Loeb studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Munich, and Strasbourg, earning his M.D. in 1884. After research posts in Germany and at the Naples Zoological Station, he moved to the United States in 1891, where he taught at Bryn Mawr, the University of Chicago, and the University of California before joining the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York.
Loeb was known for his bold, highly experimental approach to biology. He argued that living processes could be explained through physics and chemistry, and he became especially well known for research on tropisms, regeneration, and artificial parthenogenesis—the activation of egg development without fertilization. That work made him one of the best-known biologists of his time and a major figure in the rise of experimental biology.
He died in Bermuda on February 11, 1924. Even now, he is remembered as a scientist who pushed biology toward careful experiment and away from vague speculation, helping make the subject more quantitative and laboratory-driven.