Haeckel

Haeckel, Ernest Heinrich (b. 1834), the great German biologist, was born at Potsdam and educated at Wurzburg, Berlin, and Vienna. He settled at Jena in 1861, and became professor of zoology there in 1865. In the following year he met Darwin in London. He has travelled for the purpose of zoological research from Norway to Ceylon, and has also visited Madeira and the Canary Islands. His monograph on the Red Sea corals (1876) was the result of an exploration undertaken in 1873. The chief of his other monographs are The Radiolariae (1862) with which is given an elaborate atlas, that on calcareous sponges (Kalkschwamme, 1872), and the work on jelly-fishes (System der Medusen, 1879); while he also made contributions to the Challenger reports. Among his more general works are Generelle Morphologie, The Natural History of Creation, and Anthropogenie. Haeckel was the first German who accepted the Darwinian theories, and he has done more than anyone to popularise them.