Artbildung biography

Eine neue Art im Gebiet der Ursprungsart.
Auch Gründereffekt-Speziation · eine Form der allopatrischen Artbildung · Gründung einer kleinen, abgetrennten Population.
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August Weismann

German evolutionary biologist (1834–1914)

For the 19th-century New York politician, see Augustus Weismann.

August Friedrich Leopold Weismann (17 January 1834 – 5 November 1914) was a German evolutionary biologist. Fellow German Ernst Mayr ranked him as the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charles Darwin. Weismann became the Director of the Zoological Institute and the first Professor of Zoology at Freiburg.

His main contribution involved germ plasm theory, at one time also known as Weismannism,^[1] according to which inheritance (in a multicellular animal) only takes place by means of the germ cells—the gametes such as egg cells and sperm cells. Other cells of the body—somatic cells—do not function as agents of heredity. The effect is one-way: germ cells produce somatic cells and are not affected by anything the somatic cells learn or therefore any ability an individual acquires during its life. Genetic information cannot pass from soma to germ plasm and on to the next generation. Biologists ref

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August Friedrich Leopold Weismann studied how the traits of organisms developed and evolved in a variety of organisms, mostly insects and aquatic animals, in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Weismann proposed the theory of the continuity of germ-plasm, a theory of heredity. Weismann postulated that germ-plasm was the hereditary material in cells, and parents transmitted to their offspring only the germ-plasm present in germ-cells (sperm and egg cells) rather than somatic or body cells. Weismann also promoted Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of the evolution of species. Weismann argued that only changes to the germ cells, and not body cells, could be inherited, a theory that influenced theories of heredity throughout later centuries.

Weismann was born on 17 January 1834 in Frankfurt am Main, in the German Confederation. His mother, Elise Eleanore Lübbren, was a musician and painter, and his father, Johann Konrad August Weismann, was a classics professor. Weismann studied music, particularly the works of Beethoven, and he studied nature, from which he

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Bernhard Rensch

German evolutionary biologist and ornithologist (1900–1990)

Bernhard Rensch (21 January 1900 – 4 April 1990) was a German evolutionary biologist and ornithologist who did field work in Indonesia and India. Starting his scientific career with pro-Lamarckian views, he shifted to selectionism and became one of the architects of the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology, which he popularised in Germany. Besides his work on how environmental factors influenced the evolution of geographically isolated populations and on evolution above the species level, which contributed to the modern synthesis, he also worked extensively in the area of animal behavior (ethology) and on philosophical aspects of biological science. His education and scientific work were interrupted by service in the German military during both World War I and World War II.

Biography

Rensch was born in Thale and as a young boy, he took an interest in observing the natural world and discovered a talent for drawing and painting. He served in the German army from 1917 to 1920 and began to