Walther flemming biography sampler

Walther Flemming

German biologist, histologist and founder of cytogenetics
Date of Birth:
Country: Germany

Content:
  1. Biography of Walter Flemming
  2. Contributions to Cytology
  3. Later Life and Legacy

Biography of Walter Flemming

Walter Flemming was a German biologist, histologist, and founder of cytogenetics.

He was born on April 21, , in Sachsenberg, a small town in Mecklenburg, Germany.

Walther flemming biography sampler Using newly invented aniline dyes, he was able to identify a structure that strongly absorbed basic dyes and named it chromatin. Walter Flemming passed away on August 4, , at the age of Flemming observed that the red dye was heavily absorbed by granular-appearing structures in the nucleus, and named these structures chromatin, from the Greek word for color. This was significant for later work in meiosis and the chromosomal theory of inheritance.

He was the fifth child and only son of psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Flemming () and his second wife, Auguste Winter. Flemming received his primary education at the Gymnasium der Residenzstadt in Schwerin, the capital of Mecklenburg, where he became friends with engineer, writer, and poet Heinrich Seidel, who would remain his lifelong friend.

Flemming studied medicine at Göttingen, Tübingen, Berlin, and the University of Rostock, where he graduated in after passing the state examination. During the Franco-Prussian War of , he served as a military physician.

Contributions to Cytology

Flemming was one of the pioneers of cytology.

Walther flemming biography sampler for sale How do cells divide so evenly? Concept 8: Sex cells have one set of chromosomes; body cells have two. In , Flemming used aniline dyes, a by-product of coal tar, to stain cells of salamander embryos. He described the whole process in his book Zell-substanz, Kern und Zelltheilung Cell-Substance, Nucleus, and Cell-Division , which was published in

Using newly invented aniline dyes, he was able to identify a structure that strongly absorbed basic dyes and named it chromatin. Flemming determined that chromatin correlated with thread-like structures within the cell nucleus called chromosomes (meaning colored bodies in Greek), which were later named by the German anatomist and histologist Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer ().

Belgian scientist Edouard Van Beneden () also independently conducted research in this area. Flemming studied the process of cell division and the distribution of chromosomes in daughter nuclei, which he named mitosis, from the Greek word for "thread." He used the fins and gills of salamanders and their larvae as a source of biological material to study mitosis, both in natural conditions and in stained preparations.

Walther flemming Contact About Privacy. Thomas Hunt Morgan winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on the chromosomal theory of inheritance , with his daughters, Isabel left and Lilian right , The new staining techniques enabled Flemming to observe in greater detail the process of cell division, including the longitudinal splitting of the chromosomes to produce two identical halves. Genes are real things.

The results of his observations were first published in and later appeared in his seminal work "Zellsubstanz, Kern und Zelltheilung" in Flemming was not familiar with the works on heredity by Gregor Mendel (–), so he did not see the connection between his observations and genetic inheritance, and it would be more than twenty years before Flemming's research was properly recognized.

His discoveries of mitosis and chromosomes are considered one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time and one of the 10 most important discoveries in cell biology.

Later Life and Legacy

Flemming taught at Charles University in Prague from to and then accepted a position as a professor of anatomy at the University of Kiel in He later became the director of the Anatomical Institute and held this position until his death.

Walter Flemming passed away on August 4, , at the age of

The German Society for Cell Biology named the Walter Flemming Medal in his honor.