16
JANE Μ. OPPENHEIMER
The written record fails to make clear whether Spemann knew of Harrison's paper of 1898 when he performed his own first transplantations.
While he did not mention it in 1901, when he first wrote of the desirability of transplanting the optic cup or of replacing the lens epidermis
with a piece of belly skin, or in his Nobel Prize Lecture (appended to
his autobiography, 1943), he did refer to the work of Harrison in his own
first publications dealing methodologically with transplantations (Spemann, 1906a,b). The second of these, in fact, discusses the work of
Harrison at great length. In any case, Harrison's work was strongly
instrumental in demonstrating to all embryologists the potentialities of
the transplantation technique for performing crucial experiments. In
the first transplantation experiments he ever reported (Harrison, 1898),
by using organisms of different species and different specific coloring, he
even introduced the very refinement which was later to allow the framing of the most critical question ever to be addressed to the organizer
(Spemann and H. Mangold, 1924). His influence in this connection has
been gratefully acknowledged by Spemann, who described the work on
the lateral line as "that classical investigation . . . from which I have
learned more than from almost any other investigation, not only for
technique, but also for the methodically advancing analysis" (Spemann,
1938, p. 131).
The ultimate value of Harrison's contribution to the embryology of
the 20th century transcends, however, its technical importance. What
distinguished his attainments even on the methodological side were
the originality
8 and the imaginativeness which enabled him to transform
mere method into an intellectual tool adaptable to probing the embryo
at depths at which it had never before been investigated. He himself
turned the various manipulative operations which he innovated towards
a solution of some of the profoundest problems of embryonic organization. Intrigued, like so many others, by the phenomena of polarity, he
was able to reduce some of these in his mind to coordinates of bilateral
symmetry which he could recognize as manipulable in the embryo in a
series of experiments (Harrison, 1918, 1921) which represented a study
of one of the most fundamental aspects of embryonic wholeness, a performance characterized by a freshness of approach almost unparalleled in
8
No ideas in science are of course completely original. It is extremely interesting,
in view of much that is said in this essay and elsewhere, that in private conversations Harrison has frequently stated that the work and writing which most strongly
influenced his own ideas when he was young was that of Sachs. This fact happens
to have been reported to me only after the virtual completion of the text of this
paper, and is therefore not in any way responsible for the frequent references to the
strong influences of Sachs on other investigators.
JANE Μ. OPPENHEIMER
The written record fails to make clear whether Spemann knew of Harrison's paper of 1898 when he performed his own first transplantations.
While he did not mention it in 1901, when he first wrote of the desirability of transplanting the optic cup or of replacing the lens epidermis
with a piece of belly skin, or in his Nobel Prize Lecture (appended to
his autobiography, 1943), he did refer to the work of Harrison in his own
first publications dealing methodologically with transplantations (Spemann, 1906a,b). The second of these, in fact, discusses the work of
Harrison at great length. In any case, Harrison's work was strongly
instrumental in demonstrating to all embryologists the potentialities of
the transplantation technique for performing crucial experiments. In
the first transplantation experiments he ever reported (Harrison, 1898),
by using organisms of different species and different specific coloring, he
even introduced the very refinement which was later to allow the framing of the most critical question ever to be addressed to the organizer
(Spemann and H. Mangold, 1924). His influence in this connection has
been gratefully acknowledged by Spemann, who described the work on
the lateral line as "that classical investigation . . . from which I have
learned more than from almost any other investigation, not only for
technique, but also for the methodically advancing analysis" (Spemann,
1938, p. 131).
The ultimate value of Harrison's contribution to the embryology of
the 20th century transcends, however, its technical importance. What
distinguished his attainments even on the methodological side were
the originality
8 and the imaginativeness which enabled him to transform
mere method into an intellectual tool adaptable to probing the embryo
at depths at which it had never before been investigated. He himself
turned the various manipulative operations which he innovated towards
a solution of some of the profoundest problems of embryonic organization. Intrigued, like so many others, by the phenomena of polarity, he
was able to reduce some of these in his mind to coordinates of bilateral
symmetry which he could recognize as manipulable in the embryo in a
series of experiments (Harrison, 1918, 1921) which represented a study
of one of the most fundamental aspects of embryonic wholeness, a performance characterized by a freshness of approach almost unparalleled in
8
No ideas in science are of course completely original. It is extremely interesting,
in view of much that is said in this essay and elsewhere, that in private conversations Harrison has frequently stated that the work and writing which most strongly
influenced his own ideas when he was young was that of Sachs. This fact happens
to have been reported to me only after the virtual completion of the text of this
paper, and is therefore not in any way responsible for the frequent references to the
strong influences of Sachs on other investigators.