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Up for sale "Morphogenesis" Paul Weiss Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1962.
ES-6183
Paul Alfred Weiss (March 21, 1898 –
September 8, 1989) was an Austrian biologist who specialised A teacher, experimenter and theorist, he made a
lasting contribution to science in his lengthy career, throughout which he
sought to encourage specialists in different fields to meet and share insights.
Paul Weiss was born in Vienna, the son of a Jewish couple, Carl S. Weiss, a
businessman, and Rosalie Kohn Weiss. His background favoured music, poetry, and
philosophy – Weiss himself was a violinist – but an uncle encouraged an
interest in science. Weiss received his baccalaureate in 1916. After the end of
the First World War, having
served for three years as an officer in the artillery, he commenced studies in
mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in
Vienna, (now Vienna University of
Technology). He then shifted his focus to biology with a minor in physics. He absorbed the studies of Edmond B. Wilson, Edwin G.
Concklin, and Theodor Bovari and completed his doctoral thesis in 1922
under Hans Leo Przibram, then
director of the Biological Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences in
Vienna, on the responses of butterflies to light and gravity. After completing
his thesis he traveled widely in Europe, becoming an assistant director of the
Biological Research Institute of the Vienna Academy of Sciences. In 1926 he
married Maria Helen Blaschka. His studies of limb regeneration in newts showed
that a complete limb could regenerate even if particular tissue forms were
removed from the stump: the required types of tissue would reform. He studied
cell differentiation and the transplanting and reforming of connections in the
nerves of limbs, using newts and frogs for his experiments. He went on to
consider neurobiology and morphogenesis. He introduced the idea of the
"natural experiment" – the quest for suggestive examples from nature
– and this became a favourite teaching device. In 1930 a prospective post at
the University of Frankfurt was
lost due to the depression and Weiss moved to the United States. In 1931, after
studying developing cell cultures for some time, Weiss won a Sterling
fellowship to work with Ross Granville Harrison at Yale.
He took US citizenship in 1939, publishing his Principles of
Development the same year. From 1933 to 1954, after working briefly at
Yale, he taught at the University of Chicago. In
his work on tissue cultures Weiss outlined several features of cell
proliferation: he showed how cell-patterns are affected by their substrate and,
through grafts, proved that basic neural patterns of coordination were
self-differentiating rather than learned, though higher vertebrates can
"retrain" reflexes. During World War II he worked with the American
government on nerve injury. In 1947 he was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences. In 1954 he became one of the first professors at the new Rockefeller University in New York, where he remained for
fifteen years. Paul Weiss was awarded the National Medal of Science by
President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
He died at White Plains, New York, on
September 8, 1989, at the age of 91.
