Fritz Richard Baltzer, Biologist

* March 12, 1884 in Hottingen (Zürich)
† March 18, 1974 in Bern

After studying Zoology in Bern, Fritz Richard Baltzer transferred to the Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg in 1905 and received his doctorate under Theodor Boveri in 1908, followed by his postdoctoral lecture qualification in 1910 and his promotion to an associate professor in 1915. His main research was especially on the field of developmental physiology, where his experiments on species of newts and salamanders lead to ground-breaking insights into the transmission of species-specific development factors through plasma. This knowledge was then transferred to humans in order to explain the emergence of various deformities.