Loeb, Jacques

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LOEB, JACQUES

LOEB, JACQUES (1859–1924), U.S. physiological chemist. Born near Strasbourg, Alsace, into a family of Portuguese and Italian origin, Loeb studied medicine. He immigrated to the U.S. and became professor of physiology at the University of California (1902–10), and then head of the division of general physiology at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York (1910–24). He founded and edited the Journal of General Physiology from 1918. A brilliant experimentalist, he was a pioneer in explaining vital processes on a basis of physical chemistry. Some of his special fields of work were the physiology of the brain, tropism, antagonistic salt action, the duration of life, and colloidal behavior. He wrote The Organism as a Whole (1916), Regeneration from a Physico-chemical Viewpoint (1924), and Proteins and the Theory of Colloidal Behaviour (19242).

bibliography:

Osterhout, in: Journal of General Physiology, 8 (1925–28), ix–lix; Armstrong, in: Journal of General Physiology, 8 (1928), 653–70; Kobelt, in: Journal of General Physiology, 8 (1928), lxiii–xcii, bibl.

[Samuel Aaron Miller]

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