Roux, Wilhelm

Roux, Wilhelm

(vĭl`hĕlm ro͞o), 1850–1924, German anatomist, a founder of experimental embryology. He was a pupil of Ernst Haeckel and a professor (1895–1921) at the Univ. of Halle. In his studies of the relationship of embryology to evolution he developed specialized research techniques that he called "developmental mechanics," and in 1894 he founded as its organ the Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik.

Roux, Wilhelm

 

Born June 9, 1850, in Jena; died Sept. 15, 1924, in Halle. German anatomist and embryologist.

Roux graduated from the University of Jena. He was a professor at the universities of Breslau (from 1879), Innsbruck (from 1889), and Halle (from 1895 to 1921). On the basis of his research on the individual development of animals, Roux founded developmental mechanics. He did not limit himself to just describing developmental stages but attempted to elucidate what produced these stages. In 1885 he began an experimental study of embryonic development, predominantly in amphibians. Despite the mechanistic and, in a number of Roux’s followers, idealist way of treating the phenomena of individual development, the developmental mechanics promoted the accumulation of factual material in experimental embryology.

In 1894, Roux founded the journal Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen (Archives for the Developmental Mechanics of Organisms), which was posthumously named in his honor (W. Roux Archiv…).

WORKS

Gesammelte Abhandlungen über Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen, vols. 1–2. Leipzig, 1895.