TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “The Columbia is lost; there are no survivors.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index E > Boris Ephrussi Quotes

Boris Ephrussi
(9 May 1901 - 2 May 1979)

Russian-French biochemist and geneticist who was a pioneer in the study of the biochemical genetics of the fruit fly.


Science Quotes by Boris Ephrussi (3 quotes)

The ability of the genes to vary and, when they vary (mutate), to reproduce themselves in their new form, confers on these cell elements, as Muller has so convincingly pointed out, the properties of the building blocks required by the process of evolution. Thus, the cell, robbed of its noblest prerogative, was no longer the ultimate unit of life. This title was now conferred on the genes, subcellular elements, of which the cell nucleus contained many thousands and, more precisely, like Noah’s ark, two of each kind.
— Boris Ephrussi
Nucleo-cytoplasmic Relations in Micro-Organisms: Their Bearing on Cell Heredity and Differentiation (1953), 2-3.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Building (158)  |  Building Block (9)  |  Cell (146)  |  Cell Nucleus (2)  |  Element (322)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Form (976)  |  Gene (105)  |  Kind (564)  |  Life (1870)  |  More (2558)  |  New (1273)  |  Noah�s Ark (2)  |  Nucleus (54)  |  Point (584)  |  Precisely (93)  |  Process (439)  |  Required (108)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Two (936)  |  Ultimate (152)

The admirable perfection of the adaptations of organisms and of their parts to the functions they perform has detracted attention from the fact that adaptedness does not consist of perfect fit, but capacity to fit or to adapt in a variety of ways: only in this sense is adaptedness a guarantee of further survival and evolutionary progress, for too perfect a fit is fatal to the species if not to the individual. This, I think, sets phylogeny and ontogeny in the correct perspective. It is the genotype which bears the marks of past experience of the species and defines the range of possible fits. What fit is actually chosen, what phenotype is actually evolved, is determined by the ever renewed individual history.
— Boris Ephrussi
'The Interplay of Heredity and Environment in the Synthesis of Respiratory Enzymes in Yeast', The Harvey Lectures: Delivered under the auspices of The Harvey Society of New York 1950-1951, 1951, 156, 45-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Adapt (70)  |  Adaptation (59)  |  Attention (196)  |  Bear (162)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Chosen (48)  |  Consist (223)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Experience (494)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fit (139)  |  Function (235)  |  Genotype (8)  |  Guarantee (30)  |  Heredity (62)  |  History (716)  |  Individual (420)  |  Ontogeny (10)  |  Organism (231)  |  Past (355)  |  Perfect (223)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Perform (123)  |  Perspective (28)  |  Phenotype (5)  |  Phylogeny (10)  |  Possible (560)  |  Progress (492)  |  Range (104)  |  Renew (20)  |  Sense (785)  |  Set (400)  |  Species (435)  |  Survival (105)  |  Think (1122)  |  Variety (138)  |  Way (1214)

The present knowledge of the biochemical constitution of the cell was achieved largely by the use of destructive methods. Trained in the tradition of the theory of solutions, many a biochemist tends, even today, to regard the cell as a “bag of enzymes”. However, everyone realizes now that the biochemical processes studied in vitro may have only a remote resemblance to the events actually occurring in the living cell.
— Boris Ephrussi
Nucleo-cytoplasmic Relations in Micro-Organisms: Their Bearing on Cell Heredity and Differentiation (1953), 108.
Science quotes on:  |  Biochemist (9)  |  Cell (146)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Enzyme (19)  |  Event (222)  |  In Vitro (3)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Living (492)  |  Method (531)  |  Present (630)  |  Realize (157)  |  Regard (312)  |  Remote (86)  |  Resemblance (39)  |  Solution (282)  |  Solution. (53)  |  Tend (124)  |  Theory (1015)  |  Today (321)  |  Tradition (76)  |  Train (118)  |  Use (771)



Quotes by others about Boris Ephrussi (1)

We spend long hours discussing the curious situation that the two great bodies of biological knowledge, genetics and embryology, which were obviously intimately interrelated in development, had never been brought together in any revealing way. An obvious difficulty was that the most favorable organisms for genetics, Drosophila as a prime example, were not well suited for embryological study, and the classical objects of embryological study, sea urchins and frogs as examples, were not easily investigated genetically. What might we do about it? There were two obvious approaches: one to learn more about the genetics of an embryologically favourable organism, the other to better understand the development of Drosophila. We resolved to gamble up to a year of our lives on the latter approach, this in Ephrussi’s laboratory in Paris which was admirably equipped for tissue culture, tissue or organ transplantation, and related techniques.
In 'Recollections', Annual Review of Biochemistry, 1974, 43, 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Approach (112)  |  Better (493)  |  Biological (137)  |  Classical (49)  |  Culture (157)  |  Curious (95)  |  Development (441)  |  Difficulty (201)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drosophila (10)  |  Embryology (18)  |  Equipped (17)  |  Favorable (24)  |  Frog (44)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Genetics (105)  |  Great (1610)  |  Hour (192)  |  Investigate (106)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Learn (672)  |  Live (650)  |  Long (778)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Never (1089)  |  Object (438)  |  Obvious (128)  |  Organ (118)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Research (753)  |  Sea (326)  |  Sea Urchin (3)  |  Situation (117)  |  Spend (97)  |  Study (701)  |  Technique (84)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Together (392)  |  Two (936)  |  Understand (648)  |  Way (1214)  |  Year (963)


See also:
  • 9 May - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Ephrussi's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.