The German experimental embryologist Hans Spemann (1869-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the organizer effect in embryonic development.

Hans Spemann, son of Wilhelm Spemann, a publisher, was born in Stuttgart on June 27, 1869. After a period in his father's business and military service, he became a medical student at the University of Heidelberg, spent a period at the University of Munich, and in 1894 transferred to Würzburg. There he abandoned medicine for science, studied under Theodor Boveri, who greatly influenced his future research, and graduated in 1895.

Spemann then began research in the Zoological Institute at Würzburg, where he became a lecturer in 1898. In 1908 he was appointed professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in the University of Rostock, and in 1914 associate director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology at Berlin-Dahlem. He was called to the chair of zoology...