DU BOIS, REYMOND-EMILE. — German physiologist, born in Berlin on 7 November 1818, died there on 26 December 1896. He began his scientific activity as a geologist in Bonn, but later devoted himself to physiology, inaugurating a new chapter: electrophysiology.
He held that living tissues were composed of molecules possessing electrical properties and that the behavior of the organ, for example, of the muscle, in toto under its various physiological and experimental conditions, was the resultant of the behavior of these individual electrical molecules. This theory of his was subsequently challenged, when it became clear that electrical molecules were not necessary to explain the phenomena of animal electricity: the electrical state is a condition of the functional state of the organ (muscle).
Following the death of his teacher J. P. Müller, he obtained the chair of physiology at the University of Berlin, previously held by Müller. He was a mechanist and, in his final years, discouraged and pessimistic regarding the human capacity to discover the essence of vital phenomena.
From 1857 to 1877 he directed the Archiv für Anatomie founded by Müller. His principal works: Untersuchungen über tierische Elektrizität (2 vols., Berlin 1848–84); Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens (Leipzig 1872); Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur allgemeinen Muskel und Nervenphysiologie (2 vols., 1875–77); Die sieben Weltraetsel (Berlin 1880), etc.