Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

In 1914 the biologist Hans Spemann was appointed to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology in Berlin-Dahlem and took over the department for the developmental mechanics of animals. At the same time he became an honorary professor of zoology at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. His main area of research was the early embryonic stage of various species of newt and frog. Spemann conducted his first important experiments on cell division in 1902. He succeeded, for example, in separating the two cells of the two-cell stage of a salamander, in this way artificially creating twins.

In 1919 he moved to Universität Freiburg.

He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on experimental developmental physiology.