Loeb, Jacques

Loeb, Jacques (lōb), 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 inducing parthenogenesis and 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 the Journal of General Physiology. His works include The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912), Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilization (1913), and The Organism as a Whole (1916).

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Loeb, Jacques (1859–1924) physiologist; born in Mayen, Germany. He taught and performed research in Germany (1886–91), where his controversial research on caterpillars (1888) demonstrated that animals, like plants, possess similar mechanistic physiological responses (tropisms) to environmental stimuli. In 1899, he discovered artificial parthenogenesis in sea urchin eggs. Frustrated by Bismarck's oppressive regime, Loeb came to the U.S.A. to teach at Bryn Mawr (Pa.) College (1891–92). He moved to the University of Chicago (1892–1902), to the University of California: Berkeley (1902–10) before becoming a physiology professor at the Rockefeller Institute (1910–24). His studies on protein chemistry (1918–24) revealed that proteins can react as acids or bases. His philosophy of psychological and physiological tropisms is summarized in his most-read book, The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912).