Up for auction "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 in morphogenesis, development, differentiation and neurobiology. 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.