features of cell proliferation: he showed how cell-patterns are affected by their substrate and, through grafts, proved that basic neural patterns of coordination were self-differentiating rather than learned, though higher vertebrates can "retrain" reflexes. During World War II he worked with the American government on nerve injury. In 1947 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1953. In 1954 he became one of the first professors at the new Rockefeller University in New York, where he remained for fifteen years. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year. Paul Weiss was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. He died at White Plains, New York, on September 8, 1989, at the age of 91. In similarity to Ludwig von Bertalanffy he described organisms in a systems biology approach with concepts like hierarchically organized systems or primary activity. Thus in some of his works he challenged a reductionist applicability of mechanistic and deterministic physical laws to solely explain the phenomena of life. See also Organicism Morphogenetic fields Bibliography References External links . (A longer version of the above.) Austrian biologists American biologists Jewish American scientists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences National Medal of Science laureates University of Chicago faculty Rockefeller University faculty TU Wien alumni Scientists from Vienna Austrian emigrants to the United States 1898 births 1989 deaths 20th-century biologists Members of the American Philosophical Society