Otto Jaekel

Who was Otto Jaekel?

Otto Max Johannes Jaekel was a German paleontologist and geologist.

Jaekel was born in Neusalz, Prussian Silesia. He studied geology and paleontology in Liegnitz. After graduating in 1883, he moved to Breslau and studied under Ferdinand Roemer until 1885. Karl von Zittel awarded a PhD to Jaekel in Munich in 1886. Between 1887 bis 1889, Jaekel was an assistant of E.W. Benecke at Geologisch-Paläontologisches Institut in Straßburg, and worked in Berlin and at the Geologisch-Paläontologisches Museum beginning 1894. Jaekel relocated to the University of Vienna in 1903. Between 1906 and 1928, Jaekel was a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he founded the German Paleontological Society in 1912. He described a second species of Plateosaurus in 1914. After his retirement in Greifswald, Otto Jaekel accepted a position at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in 1928. Jaekel died after a short and unexpected illness in the German Hospital in Beijing.

Although Jaekel specialized in the study of fossil vertebrates, 27 of his publications were about echinodermata.