Wilhelm Roux and his programme for developmental biology

Abstract

Roux’s Archives of Developmental Biology, founded nearly 100 years ago as Archiv für Entwickelungsmechanik der Organismen, was the first journal devoted exclusively to the causal analysis of ontogenetic development. After a varied history (see back of volume title page), it is now entering Volume 200. On this occasion, the editor and the publisher have decided to initiate a series of essays highlighting problems and achievements in developmental biology in the discipline’s early years. We are encouraged in this venture by the increasing interest taken by practising developmental biologists in various countries in the history of their discipline and in the views of its pioneers — views that in our day may be appreciated in a more detached and (hopefully) more objective vein than by earlier generations of developmental biologists, who had to struggle with the pioneers’ inevitable errors while taking their achievements for granted.