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 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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