Wilhelm Roux, the father of experimental embryology, was born in Jena, Germany. His teachers were some of the finest scientists of the time, namely Ernst Haeckel at Jana, Rudolf Virchow at Berlin, and Freidrich von Recklinghausen (1833-1910) at Strasbourg. After receiving his university education, Roux taught at the University of Breslau 1879 until 1889, he became a professor at Innsbruck, Austria in 1889, and a professor and director of the anatomical institute at Halle, a position he held from 1889 until he retired in 1921.

Roux was a tireless worker who studied embryos seeking a causal connection between function and form. Rather than simply looking at embryos as his predecessors did, he often manipulated embryos to seek understanding of developmental patterns. Ultimately, he sought to describe development in physical and chemical terms. He focused on frog eggs and embryos and investigated many phenomena. An example: he studied the orientation of the plane of...