Loeb, Jacques b.April 7, 1859; Mayen (Rhineland), Prussia d. February 11, 1924;
Hamilton, Bermuda German Jewish scientist who emigrated to the United States in 1891. He fostered scientific exchange among German and American scholars. In times of global shortage in Germany after World War I he actively supported German biologists in raising funds for their research projects.
Loeb was a central figure in American German scientific relations of his time.After Loeb had studied medicine, he started his scientific career in Germany working under the physiologist Friedrich Goltz (1834-1902) in Straβburg. In 1884 he finished his thesis on cerebral localizations of bodily functions in dogs. Having continued these neurophysiological studies at Nathan Zuntz’s (1847-1920) institute in Berlin, he moved on to Wurzburg where he worked as an assistant to Adolf Fick from 1886 to 1888. In Wurzburg he was strongly influenced by the studies of the botanist and plant physiologist Julius Sachs (1832-1897). Sachs studied the reaction of plants to external stimuli like light and gravity. Following these studies, Loeb tried to show that the movements of lower animals were not directed by any vitalistic instinct or “will” but by light (heliotropism) and other external factors. In 1888 Loeb returned to Straβburg. During the winter of 1889-1890 Loeb visited the Naples Zoological Station. Here he met the supporters of a new trend in biological research called “developmental mechanics,” among them leading proponents of this discipline. Loeb became acquainted with their methods of research and started his own experiments on embryology and regeneration using sea urchins. During this time he also developed an interest in the philosophical theories of the physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916). Mach’s mechanistic philosophy and his theory of cognition that considered science as being directed to influence the environment to fit human needs formed the theoretical basis of Loeb’s further studies.
Growing antisemitism, poor job prospects, and his marriage to the American Anne Leonard made Loeb look for an academic position in the United States. In 1891 he left for the United States and after stays in Bryn Mawr, Chicago, and Berkeley, he came to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1910, where he held a research position until his death.
In America, Loeb was able to continue his studies on the physiology of development. From 1892 on he regularly visited the newly established Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole to do research and give summer courses. Woods Hole offered similar research conditions as the Naples Zoological Station. Thus, Loeb could transfer and apply the methods he had learned in Europe.
Loeb’s research on the physiology of development made him a well-known scientist. Experimenting on the influence of inorganic substances on sea urchin eggs, he was able to publish in 1899 his most famous finding: “On the Nature of the Process of Fertilization and the Artificial Production of Normal Larvae (Plutei) from the Unfertilized Eggs of the Sea Urchin.” Loeb found that he was able to initiate embryological development by treating sea urchin eggs with inorganic salt solutions. This finding called “Artificial Parthenogenesis” attracted attention all over the world. For this discovery Loeb was nominated for the Nobel Prize.
The correspondence Loeb exchanged with the leading scientists of his time from Europe and America indicates that he was not working on his own as an isolated scientist but that he tried to foster scientific exchange and international transfer of knowledge. With growing intensity he observed and commented on the political changes that occurred in Germany and America before and during World War I. He feared that the war could stop any scientific dialogue between countries. After the war he tried to help German scientists to keep up their work under disastrous working conditions in troubled times by sending urgently required scientific journals, offering scholarships, and inviting some of them (among them the future Nobel Prize winners Otto Warburg and Otto Meyerhof) to work with him in the United States.
Heiner Fangerau and Irmgard Muller
References and Further Reading
Osterhout, Withrop, and John Van Leuven.
“Jacques Loeb.” The Journal of General Physiology 8 (1928): ix—xcii.
Pauly, P J. Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University, 1987.
Rasmussen, C., and R. Tilman. Jacques Loeb: His Science and Social Activism and Their Philosophical Foundations.” Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 229. Philadelphia, 1998.
Reingold, N. “Jaques Loeb, the Scientist: His Papers and His Era.” Library of Congress: Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 19 (1962): 119-130.