Loeb, Jacques

Loeb, Jacques lōb [key], 1859–1924, American physiologist, b. Germany, M.D. Univ. of Strasbourg, 1884. He came to the United States in 1891 and taught at Bryn Mawr, the Univ. of Chicago, and the Univ. of California. From 1910 he was a member of the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller Univ.). Best known for his tropism theory and for his experiments in inducingparthenogenesisand regeneration by chemical stimulus, he also propounded the mechanistic philosophy that all ethics were the outgrowth of humanity's inherited tropisms. He was a founder and editor of theJournal of General Physiology.His works includeThe Mechanistic Conception of Life(1912),Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilization(1913), andThe Organism as a Whole(1916).

See more Encyclopedia articles on:Biology: Biographies