Hans Adolf Eduard DrieschBorn 28 Oct 1867; died 16 Apr 1941 at age 73.German experimental embryologist and philosopher who was the last great spokesman for vitalism, the theory that life cannot be explained as physical or chemical phenomena. In 1891, he separated the first two cells formed by a dividing sea urchin egg and discovered that each would form a whole larva. Driesch concluded that the fate of a cell is not determined at the two-cell stage, but by its position in the whole organism. He published his first wholly theoretical monograph that year and, in 1892, speculated that vitalistic interpretations of biological data might be reasonable. His experimental results gave strong impetus to the then new science of experimental embryology. He also studied embryonic induction, enzyme action, and nuclear and cytoplasmic interaction. |
