LOEB, JACQUES (1859-1924), German biologist, was born in Germany, April 7, 1859. Graduating at Ascanisches Gymnasium, Berlin, he studied medicine in Munich and Stras bourg (M.D., 1885). He was assistant in physiology at the universities of Wurtzburg (1886-88) and Strasbourg (1888–go), working also at the Naples biological station from 1889 to 1891. He went to the United States in 1891 and taught biology at Bryn Mawr for a year. He became assistant professor of physiol ogy and experimental biology at the University of Chicago in 1892, being appointed associate professor in 1895 and professor in 1 goo. In 1902 he became professor of physiology at the Uni versity of California. From 1 9I o to the date of his death he was head of the division of general physiology at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. He died at Hamilton, Bermuda, Feb. 1924. Dr. Loeb's work was chiefly directed to a pursuit of the real distinction between living and dead matter, the thesis upon which he worked being that all living things are chemical machines and that their workings are open to the same mecha nistic explanation as are those of any machines made of inert matter. His most important researches concern the effects of
electrolytic, thermant and radiant energy upon living matter, regeneration, the process of fertilization in the egg and artificial parthenogenesis. In 1899 he was able to produce larvae from the unfertilized ova of the sea-urchin, and in 1915 tadpoles from the similar ova of frogs.
Among his published works are: The Heliotropism of Animals and Its Identity with the Heliotropism of Plants (189o) ; Physiological Morphology (1891—g2) ; Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology (igoo) ; Studies in General Physiology (1905) ; The Dynamics of Living Matter (1906) ; The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912) ; Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilisation (1913) ; The Organism as a Whole (1916) ; Forced Movements: Tropisms and Animal Conduct (1918) ; Proteins and the Theory of Colloidal Behaviour (1922) ; and Regeneration from a Physicochemical Viewpoint (1924).