The German biologist August Freidrich Leopold Weismann (1834-1914) was one of the founders of the science of genetics.

August Weismann was born on Jan. 17, 1834, at Frankfurt am Main. He early showed intense interest in natural history, and while still a schoolboy he made extensive collections of butterflies, moths, beetles, and plants from the country around Frankfurt. He entered the University at Göttingen in 1852 and took a four-year course in medicine.

Weismann became an assistant in a hospital at Rostock (1856-1857) and then an unpaid assistant to a chemist in Rostock Chemical Institute. He soon decided he was not suited to chemistry and in 1858 went to Baden and to Italy as an army doctor. In 1861 he worked in Giessen for 2 months under Rudolf Leuckart, whom Weismann much admired and to whom he dedicated The Germ Plasm (1892). Weismann then obtained an appointment as private physician to the Archduke...