Nobel Prize Recipient. Hans Spemann received international recognition after being awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and according to the Nobel Prize committee, "for his discovery of the organizer effect in embryonic development." (His speech for the commettee reception was ended by his nazi salute) Being the first embryologist to receive this coveted award, he received 21 nominations for the Nobel candidacy, and most within the last three years. Around 1920 Spemann succeeded in using fine pipettes or a loop of his daughter Margaret's fine baby hair to move around different parts of a frog embryo. He demonstrated that certain groups of cells adapt themselves to their surroundings while others, such as the bilaterian mouth, have an organizing effect on their surroundings. Born the oldest son of four children of a well-to-do publisher, he left school in 1888 for a year in his father's publishing business. This followed with one year in military service and another year as a book seller, he loved the classics in literature. In 1891, he entered the University of Heidelberg with plans to major in medicine. During the winter of 1894, he studied at the University of Munich and that spring he studied at the Zoological Institute at the University of Würzburg until 1908. By 1895 he had abandoned medicine and earned degrees in zoology, botany, and physics. His Ph.D. thesis was a study of the cell lineage in the Strongylus paradoxus, a worm. At this time, he received a teaching diploma. His career began in 1898 as a lecturer in zoology at the University of Würzburg; in 1901 he published his first scientific paper; 1908 he became Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Rostock; and in 1914 he became Associate Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology at Berlin-Dahlem. In 1919 when the position became opened, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, a post which he held until he retired and became Emeritus Professor in 1935. He retired the same year that he received the Nobel Prize. Besides the Nobel Prize, he was given the title of Geheimrat or Privy Councilor. He will always be considered a pioneer in embryonic research using relatively large eggs of amphibians. He performed numerous experiments on embryonic growth and development. Spemann studied very early development, right after fertilization of the egg through the gastrulation phase. He recorded that the eyeball and a primitive brain were present in early development. Although he never referred to the word "cloning," he attempted to duplicate the embryo, which was not done successfully until 1952. He described his researches in his book "Embryonic Development and Induction," which was published in German in 1936 and in English in 1938. A doctorate student, Hilde Mangold wrote her 1923 thesis on the research done while he was her advisor. Shortly after receiving her PhD in 1924, she died from a gas leak explosion in her family's Berlin apartment. Sources state her detailed paper was "one of the very few doctoral theses in biology that have directly resulted in the awarding of a Nobel Prize". The paper was published shortly after her death. Spemann mentioned his brilliant student twice in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, thus she was not a candidate for this coveted award. He married in 1892 and had three sons and a daughter. He enjoyed evenings with friends and family to discuss art, literature, and philosophy. He was honored on a stamp issued by Nicaragua in 1995, which was part of a sheet of stamps honoring 12 Nobel Prize recipients. He died of heart failure.