1834-1919

German Embryologist

Ernst Haeckel was among the first German biologists to adopt Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He popularized evolutionary thought on the European continent and added many novel concepts to biology and the social sciences. Haeckel is most often remembered for his "law of recapitulation," the belief that the evolutionary history of any given animal is repeated during its embryological development.

Haeckel was born in Potsdam, Germany, to middle-class parents, Carl and Charlotte. He was a curious naturalist from the start, studying botany in grammar school and cultivating his artistic skills to produce sketches and watercolors of living things. He began medical studies at the age of 18 and was licensed as a general practitioner, surgeon, and obstetrician at the age of 25. But soon after Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, Haeckel read a German...