Ernst Haeckel
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Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16, 1834 — August 9, 1919), also written von Haeckel, was an eminent German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and "fantastic artist".
Career
Ernst Haeckel named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology and the kingdom Protista (details below). Haeckel promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial "recapitulation theory" claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' entire evolutionary development, or phylogeny: "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".
The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-color illustrations of animals and sea creatures (see: Kunstformen der Natur, "Artforms of Nature"). As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträthsel (1895-1899, in English, The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträthsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching (1877, English 1879, ISBN 1-4102-1175-4) to support teaching evolution.
See also
- Alternative taxonomical classification
- Dysteleology
- Embryology
- Francis Galton
- Haeckel's Tale, a horror film by John McNaughton, featuring a fictionalized version of Ernst Haeckel
- List of wildlife artists
- Proteus (2004 film), an animated documentary by David Lebrun, largely focussing on Ernst Haeckel
