Birth of Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel was born on 16 February 1834 in Potsdam. A German zoologist, naturalist and philosopher, Haeckel was the leading advocate of Darwin's theory of evolution in Germany. He described and named thousands of new species, particularly radiolarians, and produced beautifully illustrated books such as Kunstformen der Natur. He coined terms such as ecology, phylum and phylogeny, and proposed the recapitulation theory, that the development of an embryo repeats its evolutionary history, which was later discredited. He also promoted a philosophy called monism and made drawings of embryos that were criticized as inaccurate. Some of his ideas were used by later racial theorists, a reputation that clouds his legacy.

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