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Wilhelm Roux (1850-1924)

Wilhelm Roux was a nineteenth-century experimental embryologist who was best known for pioneering Entwicklungsmechanik, or developmental mechanics. Roux was born in Jena, Germany, on 9 June 1850, the only son of Clotilde Baumbach and a university fencing master, F. A. Wilhelm Ludwig Roux. Roux described himself as an aloof child, but when he was fourteen he cultivated a passion for science that was encouraged by the director at Oberrealschule in Meiningen.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

Robert Geoffrey Edwards (1925-2013)

Robert Geoffrey Edwards worked with Patrick Christopher Steptoe to develop in-vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques during the 1960s and 1970s in the United Kingdom. Louise Brown, the world' s first "test-tube baby," was born as a result of Edwards and Steptoe's IVF techniques in 1978, and since then more than four million children have been born using IVF techniques. Publicity and controversy accompanied Edwards and Steptoe's work as conservative religious institutions expressed concern over the morality of the IVF procedure.

Format: Articles

Subject: People, Reproduction

Pope Gregory XIV (1535-1591)

Pope Gregory XIV, born Nicolo Sfondrati, reversed the bull of Pope Sixtus V, Effraenatum, under which an abortion at any time of gestation can be punished by excommunication. He supported the Aristotelian distinction between an "animated" and "unanimated" fetus, making abortion of an unanimated fetus punishable by lesser means. This decision contributed to the historical debates within the Roman Catholic Church on when a fetus has a soul, and when abortion was punishable by excommunication.

Format: Articles

Subject: People, Religion, Reproduction

Wilhelm His, Sr. (1831-1904)

Wilhelm His, Sr. was born on 9 July 1831 in Basel, Switzerland, to Katharina La Roche and Eduard His. He began his medical studies at Basel in 1849 and later transferred to the University of Bern during the winter semester of 1849-1850. A year later, His arrived at the University of Berlin, where he studied under Johannes Müller and Robert Remak. For his clinical training, His attended the University of Würzburg from 1852-1853.

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Subject: People

Francis Maitland Balfour (1851-1882)

During the 1870s and early 1880s, the British morphologist Francis Maitland Balfour contributed in important ways to the budding field of evolutionary embryology, especially through his comparative embryological approach to uncovering ancestral relationships between groups. As developmental biologist and historian Brian Hall has observed, the field of evolutionary embryology in the nineteenth century was the historical ancestor of modern-day evolutionary developmental biology.

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Subject: People

James Alexander Thomson (1958- )

James Alexander Thomson, affectionately known as Jamie Thomson, is an American developmental biologist whose pioneering work in isolating and culturing non-human primate and human embryonic stem cells has made him one of the most prominent scientists in stem cell research. While growing up in Oak Park, Illinois, Thomson's rocket-scientist uncle inspired him to pursue science as a career. Born on 20 December 1958, Thomson entered the nearby University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign nineteen years later as a National Merit Scholar majoring in biophysics.

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Subject: People

Craig C. Mello (1960- )

Craig C. Mello is an American developmental biologist and Nobel Laureate, who helped discover RNA interference (RNAi). Along with his colleague Andrew Fire, he developed gene knockouts using RNAi. In 006 Mello won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contribution. Mello also contributed to developmental biology, focusing on gene regulation, cell signaling, cleavage formation, germline determination, cell migration, cell fate differentiation, and morphogenesis.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

Charles Bonnet (1720-1793)

Charles Bonnet was a naturalist and philosopher in the mid eighteenth century. His most important contribution to embryology was the discovery of parthenogenesis in aphids, proving that asexual reproduction of offspring was possible. In his later life, he was an outspoken defender of the theory of generation now known as preformationism, which stated that offspring exist prior to conception preformed in the germ cell of one of their parents.

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Subject: People

Ian Wilmut (1944- )

British embryologist Sir Ian Wilmut, best known for his work in the field of animal genetic engineering and the successful cloning of sheep, was born 7 July 1944 in Hampton Lucy, England. The family later moved to Scarborough, in the north of the country, to allow his father to accept a teaching position. There Wilmut met Gordon Whalley, head of the biology department at Scarborough High School for Boys, which Wilmut attended.

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Subject: People

Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734-1794)

Caspar Friedrich Wolff is most famous for his 1759 doctoral dissertation, Theoria Generationis, in which he described embryonic development in both plants and animals as a process involving layers of cells, thereby refuting the accepted theory of preformation: the idea that organisms develop as a result of the unfolding of form that is somehow present from the outset, as in a homunculus. This work generated a great deal of controversy and discussion at the time of its publication but was an integral move in the reemergence and acceptance of the theory of epigenesis.

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Subject: People

Sergio Cereceda Stone (1942- )

Sergio Cereceda Stone was born 16 April 1942 in the coastal city of Valparaiso, Chile. Stone's mother Luz was a housewife and caretaker for Sergio and his younger brother Lionel; his father Sergio served among the country's twenty appellate court judges. In the early 1950s Stone's father relocated the family to Santiago to further his law career.

Format: Articles

Subject: People, Ethics, Reproduction

Warren Harmon Lewis (1870-1964)

As one of the first to work at the Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Embryology, Warren Harmon Lewis made a number of contributions to the field of embryology. In addition to his experimental discoveries on muscle development and the eye, Lewis also published and revised numerous works of scientific literature, including papers in the Carnegie Contributions to Embryology and five editions of Gray's Anatomy.

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Subject: People

Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (1867-1941)

Although educated as a scientist who studied with both August Weismann and Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch was first employed as a professor of philosophy and became a strong proponent of vitalism. Driesch was born on 28 October 1867, the only child of Josefine Raudenkolb and Paul Driesch. He grew up in a wealthy merchant family in Hamburg, Germany, where he was educated at the humanistic Gymnasium Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums that had been founded by a friend of Martin Luther.

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Subject: People

Landrum Brewer Shettles (1909-2003)

Landrum Brewer Shettles is remembered as an important contributor to early in vitro fertilization research in the United States as well as a prolific author on the subject of choosing a child's sex before conception. Shettles was born in Pontotoc County, Mississippi on 21 November 1909 to Sue Mounce and Brazil Manly. Shettles trained and worked as a gynecologist at Columbia University Presbyterian Medical Center, after receiving his MD in 1943 from Johns Hopkins University.

Format: Articles

Subject: People, Reproduction

Robert William Briggs (1911-1983)

Robert William Briggs was a prolific developmental biologist. However, he is most identified with the first successful cloning of a frog by nuclear transplantation. His later studies focused on the problem of how genes influence development.

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Subject: People

John Philip Trinkaus (1918-2003)

John Philip Trinkaus studied the processes of cell migration and gastrulation, especially in teleost fish, in the US during the twentieth century. Called Trink by his friends, his social confidence and work ethic combined to make him a prolific and decorated developmental biologist. His scientific contributions included investigations of several different aspects of embryology.

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Subject: People

Viktor Hamburger (1900-2001)

Viktor Hamburger was an embryologist who focused on neural development. His scientific career stretched from the early 1920s as a student of Hans Spemann to the late 1980s at Washington University resolving the role of nerve growth factor in the life of neurons. Hamburger is noted for his systematic approach to science and a strict attention to detail. Throughout his life he maintained an interest in nature and the arts, believing both were important to his scientific work.

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Subject: People

Edwin Grant Conklin (1863-1952)

Edwin Grant Conklin was born in Waldo, Ohio, on 24 November 1863 to parents Nancy Maria Hull and Dr. Abram V. Conklin. Conklin's family was very religious and he seriously considered a theistic path before choosing a career in academics. Conklin's scientific work was primarily in the areas of embryology, cytology, and morphology, though many questions regarding the relationships between science, society, and philosophy had an influence on both his writings and academic lectures.

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Subject: People

Abraham Trembley (1710-1784)

Abraham Trembley's discovery of the remarkable regenerative capacity of the hydra caused many to question their beliefs about the generation of organisms. Born 3 September 1710 to a prominent Geneva family, Trembley studied at the Calvin Institute, now the University of Geneva, where he completed his thesis on calculus. He went on to become tutor for Count William Bentinck's two sons, and it was while teaching the boys natural history that Trembley came across a strange organism in a sample of pond water.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

John Spangler Nicholas (1895-1963)

John Spangler Nicholas, an American biologist, was born on 10 March 1895 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He was the only child of Elizabeth Ellen Spangler, a teacher, and Samuel Trauger Nicholas, a Lutheran minister. Nicholas held myriad administrative positions throughout his life and his contributions to biology spanned several sub-disciplines, but his most notable accomplishments were in the field of embryology.

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Subject: People

Shinya Yamanaka (1962- )

Shinya Yamanaka gained international prominence after publishing articles detailing the successful generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, first in mice, then in humans. Yamanaka induced somatic cells to act like human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), allowing researchers to experiment with non-embryonic stem cells with a similar capacity as hESCs. The research involving iPS cells therefore offered new potential for research and application in medical treatment, without many of the ethical objections that hESC research entailed.

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Subject: People

Michael D. West (1953- )

Michael D. West is a biomedical entrepreneur and investigator whose aim has been to extend human longevity with biomedical interventions. His focus has ranged from the development of telomerase-based therapeutics to the application of human embryonic stem cells in regenerative medicine. Throughout his eventful career, West has pursued novel and sometimes provocative ideas in a fervent, self-publicizing manner. As of 2009, West advocated using human somatic cell nuclear transfer techniques to derive human embryonic stem cells for therapeutic practice.

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Subject: People

William Harvey (1578-1657)

Renowned physician and scientist William Harvey is best known for his accurate description of how blood circulates through the body. While his published work on the circulation of blood is considered the most important of his academic life, Harvey also made significant contributions to embryology with the publication of his book Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium in 1651. In this book he established several theories that would set the stage for modern embryology and addressed many embryological issues including conception, embryogenesis, and spontaneous generation.

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Subject: People

Carl Gottfried Hartman (1879-1968)

Carl Gottfried Hartman researched the reproductive physiology of opossums and rhesus monkeys. He was the first to extensively study the embryology and physiology of reproduction in opossums when little was known about this mammal. Hartman worked in Texas where opossums, the only marsupial that lives in North America, were abundant. The female opossum delivers her fetal opossums in her pouch, where one can easily observe their development. After studying opossums for thirteen years, Hartman investigated the reproductive physiology of rhesus monkeys, also known as macaques.

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Subject: People

Gavin Rylands de Beer (1899-1972)

Gavin de Beer was an English zoologist known for his contributions to evolution and embryology, in particular for showing the inadequacy of the germ layer theory as it was then proposed. He was born in London, England, on 1 November 1899, but was raised for his first thirteen years in France where his father worked for a telegraph company. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1917 but his studies were soon interrupted by World War I. After serving in the military, he returned to Oxford where he studied under Edwin Goodrich.

Format: Articles

Subject: People