Leo Loeb - Early Life

Early Life

Loeb was born in 1869 in Mayen, Prussia. He was orphaned as a child and grew up in the care of an uncle. Because of ill health, Leo was educated in schools that were located in German "spa" towns. As a teenager, he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, but his tenure there was short. Indeed, over the succeeding couple of years, he spent only brief periods at several universities, in Berlin, Freiburg, and Basel, unable to focus his interests. Finally, in 1890, Loeb entered the University of Zurich Medical School. This time he remained in place, except for external sojourns to Edinburgh, London, and the United States for external clinical experiences. Leo received his M.D. in 1897. For his senior thesis, he had done research on skin transplantation in animals; that experience, combined with the influence of his older brother, Jacques, who was a physiologist, led Loeb to decide to pursue a career in experimental medicine.

His brother had a teaching position at the University of Chicago, and Leo moved to that city from Europe after completing his medical degree. Following a brief period of practicing clinical medicine—which he disliked—Loeb took a position as a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago. At those institutions, he taught experimental methodology, and, at intervals, was also a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University. Loeb became interested in blood coagulation and the growth properties of malignant cells. As an outgrowth of the latter topic, Dr. Loeb developed the cell culture technique as applied to both normal and abnormal tissues.

Loeb was next asked to join the faculty at McGill University in Montreal; however, that posting lasted only one year because of his inability to acclimatize himself to the harsh Canadian winter. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1903, beginning a series of important experiments on the influence on cancer growth by reproductive hormones. In 1907, Loeb published a study showed that breast carcinoma in mice could be hereditary, as it is now known to be in some human cases.