August Weismann, 1834–1914

August Weismann on germ-plasm variation.

August Weismann is famous for having argued against the inheritance of acquired characters. However, an analysis of his work indicates that Weismann always held that changes in external conditions, acting during development, were the necessary causes of variation in the hereditary material. For much of his career he held that acquired germ-plasm variation was inherited. An irony, which is in te...

The Germ-Plasm: a Theory of Heredity (1893), by August Weismann

Friedrich Leopold August Weismann [3] published Das Keimplasma: eine Theorie der Vererbung (The Germ-Plasm: a Theory of Heredity [2], hereafter The Germ-Plasm) while working at the University of Freiburg [4] in Freiburg, Germany in 1892. William N. Parker, a professor in the University College [5] of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, UK, translated The Germ-Plasm into English in 1893. I...

Weismann-Netter-Stuhl Syndrome:A family report

Weismann-Netter-Stuhl (WNS) syndrome is a rare skeletal anomaly that affects the diaphyseal part of both the tibiae and fibulae with posterior cortical thickening and anteroposterior bowing. This anomaly is usually bilateral and symmetrical. The patients are generally of short stature. In some cases, a family history suggesting genetic transmission of a mutation with an unknown locus has been r...

Weismann Rules! OK? Epigenetics and the Lamarckian temptation

August Weismann rejected the inheritance of acquired characters on the grounds that changes to the soma cannot produce the kind of changes to the germ-plasm that would result in the altered character being transmitted to subsequent generations. His intended distinction, between germ-plasm and soma, was closer to the modern distinction between genotype and phenotype than to the modern distinctio...

cover merge 17-4 August 2020