New York Times
LOEB FAILS OF ELECTION.
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Century Association Committee Says It Was Because of His Views.
It was learned yesterday that Dr. Jacques Loeb of the Rockefeller Institute, one of the leading investigators in biological research in the country, had been proposed for membership in the Century Association and that his name had not been acted upon affirmatively. In a letter addressed to the Committee on Admissions of the Century Association and sent to each of the 1,100 resident and non-resident members by Dr. J. McKeen Cattell of Columbia University, who proposed the name of Dr. Loeb for membership, Dr. Cattell makes the charge that the opposition to the election of Dr. Loeb was due to the fact that the candidate was a Jew.
In the letter Dr. Cattell says that Dr. Loeb himself, as soon as he learned that two members of the association were opposed to his election, had written asking his sponsor to withdraw his name. The Committee on Admissions, which, under the by-laws of the organization is obliged to consider two negative votes a rejection in the case of any candidate, also suggested to Dr. Cattell to withdraw Dr. Loeb’s name, he says, but this he declined to do. The nomination of Dr. Loeb by Dr. Cattell had been seconded by Dr. Simon Flexner and indorsed, among others, by Edmund B. Wilson, T. H. Morgan, Graham Lusk, W. G. MacCullum, Bashford Dean, C. G. Kidder, R. M. Pierce, Philip Sawyer, Charles Baskerville, and Charles H. Strong.
On behalf of the Committee on Admissions it was denied that Dr. Loeb’s race or religious faith had any bearing on the opposition to his election to the Century Association. To emphasize this it was pointed out that many of the Century’s members were Jews, and that included such men as Dr. Simon Flexner, Dr. Abraham Jacobi, Dr. Felix Adler, and others less well known. The opposition to Dr. Loeb, it was said, had been based on personal reasons in no way reflecting upon his character but such as seemed to conflict with the requirements of membership in the Century Association. Among these were instanced certain strong predilections for Socialism.
Dr. Loeb, among other important biological discoveries, became famous several years ago by achieving the artificial fertilization of the eggs of a sea-urchin on the theory that the artificial creation of protoplasmic life is possible. In his work for the Rockefeller Institute, he has been closely associated with Dr. Simon Flexner and Dr. Alexis Carrel.
