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Article ID: CBB199185340

Development and Heredity in the Interwar Period: Hans Spemann and Fritz Baltzer on Organizers and Merogones (2022)

Brandt, Christina (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 55
Issue: 2
Pages: 253-283

DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09681-w

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-022-09681-w

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Epigenetics Controversies and disputes Developmental biology Heredity 20th century Germany Baltzer, Fritz Spemann, Hans

This article explores the collaborative research of the Nobel laureate Hans Spemann (1869–1941) and the Swiss zoologist Fritz Baltzer (1884–1974) on problems at the intersection of development and heredity and raises more general questions concerning science and politics in Germany in the interwar period. It argues that Spemann and Baltzer’s collaborative work made a significant contribution to the then ongoing debates about the relation between developmental physiology and hereditary studies, although Spemann distanced himself from Drosophila genetics because of his anti-reductionist position. The article analyzes how Spemann framed the issues of heredity in terms of an epigenetic principle in the context of his work on the “organizer,” and it explores the experimental dynamics of research on newt merogones carried out by Baltzer in a methodological development of Spemann’s constriction experiments. Finally, these research attempts are discussed as part of a broader “prehistory” of the mid-twentieth century cell nuclear transplantation experiments, which provided the basis for later animal cloning.

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Article Jan Baedke; Christina Brandt (2022) Between the Wars, Facing a Scientific Crisis: The Theoretical and Methodological Bottleneck of Interwar Biology. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 209-217). unapi

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