Friedrich wolff biography

Caspar Friedrich Wolff (18 January 1733 – 22 February 1794) was a German physiologist and embryologist who is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of.
In 1759 the German physician Caspar Friedrick Wolff firmly introduced into biology the interpretation that undifferentiated materials gradually become.
Johann Friedrich Wolff (1778- 1806) was a German physician, botanist, entomologist and natural history illustrator.

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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wolff, Caspar Friedrich

WOLFF, CASPAR FRIEDRICH (1733–1794), German anatomist and physiologist, justly reckoned the founder of modern embryology, was born in 1733 at Berlin, where he studied anatomy and physiology under the elder J. F. Meckel. He graduated in medicine at Halle in 1759 his thesis being his famous Theoria generationis. After serving as a surgeon in the Seven Years' War, he wished to lecture on anatomy and physiology in Berlin, but being refused permission he accepted a call from the empress Catharine to become professor of those subjects at the academy of St Petersburg, and acted in this capacity until his death there in 1704.

While the theory of “evolution” in the crude sense—i.e. a simple growth in size and unfolding of organs all previously existent in the germ—was in possession of the field, his researches on the development of the alimentary canal in the chick first clearly established the converse view, that of epigenesis, i.e. of progressive formation and differentiation of organs from a germ

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Caspar Friedrich Wolff

German physiologist and embryologist (1733–1794)

Caspar Friedrich Wolff (18 January 1733 – 22 February 1794) was a German physiologist and embryologist who is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern embryology.

Life

Wolff was born in Berlin, Brandenburg. In 1759 he graduated as an M.D. from the University of Halle with his dissertation "Theoria Generationis", where he revived and supported the theory of epigenesis previously proposed by Aristotle and William Harvey. The paper consisted of three parts devoted to (1) development of plants, (2) development of animals, and (3) theoretical considerations. It indicated that organs are formed in differentiated layers from undifferentiated cells. Traditional and prevailing theory had speculated that organisms were already preformed in the seed (theory of preformation), that is in the human a homunculus was already sitting in the sperm. His views were not well received. Albrecht von Haller was a powerful antagonist. During the Seven Years' War, Wolff was required to practice as a field docto

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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.

Wolff was born in Berlin, Germany, on 18 January 1734 to Anna Sofia Stiebeler and Johann Wolff, a tailor. He studied medicine at the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum in Berlin from 1753 to 1754 and then enrolled at the University of Halle, graduating in 1759 with his MD. The controversy created by his dissertation, with its assertions challenging the accepted view of preformationism, made it difficult for Wolff to find work. In particular, his hypothesis was opposed by Albrecht von Haller, a strong p