following Kant, Goethe incorrectly evaluated wolff's true 

 role, crediting undeserved recognition to (Johann Friedrich) 

 Blumenbach. (20) 



Wolff's biographer A. Kirchhoff 2 called him the great 

 German physiologist. More than fifty years before this Johann 

 Friedrich Meckel, Jr., in his preface to his translation from 

 Latin to German of Wolff's work, "On the Formation of the 

 Intestinal Canal in the Incubated Chicken Egg," sought to 

 attract attention to the author's work. Wolff is considered 

 German by nationality and one "whom the Germans can speak 

 about with pride and can compare with any great names of 

 any other country." 3 K. F. Wolff was born in Berlin in 1734. 4 

 He studied medicine in Berlin and then in Halle, where he 

 finished at the university in 1759. In the same year he 

 published his dissertation, "Theoria Generationis ." His 

 work on the same subject, in a more popular form, was 

 published in German in 1764. After this, in early 1767, he 

 moved to Russia, at the invitation of the Petersburg Academy 

 of Science. There he remained to the end of his life. The 

 period of Wolff's scientific activity in Germany covered eight 

 years only. For more than two years he lost touch with his 

 research work because he participated in the Seven Years War 

 as a doctor in a field hospital. The publication of his dis- 

 sertation, in which Wolff came out against the universally 

 recognized authorities, turned the representatives of official 

 German science against him; his aspiration to become a 

 professor in the Berlin Medico-Surgical Institute was rejected 

 in an insulting way, and this removed all possibility of 

 continuing his scientific work in his motherland. 



2. A. Kirchhoff, "Caspar Friedrich Wolff: sein Leben und 

 seine Bedeutung fur die Lehre von der organischen 

 Entwickelung," in JENAISCHE ZEITSCHRIFT FUR 

 MEDIZIN UND NATURWISSENSCHAFT, 4 (1868), pp. 193 - 

 220. 



3. Introductory article of Meckel, p. 3. 



4. This date is considered more exact than that usually 

 indicated, 1733. See J. Schuster, "C . Fr. Wolff. Leben 

 und Gestalt eines deutschen Biologen," SITZ. BER. 

 GES. NATURF., Berlin, 1936 (cited by G(eorg) Uschmann, 

 CASPAR FRIEDRICH WOLFF, EIN PIONIER DER MODERNEN 

 EMBRYOLOGIE (Leipzig: Urania- Verlag , 1955].) 



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