Berthold Hatschek

Who was Berthold Hatschek?

Berthold Hatschek was an Austrian zoologist remembered for embryological and morphological studies of invertebrates.

He studied zoology in Vienna under Carl Claus, and in Leipzig with Rudolf Leuckart. He gained his doctorate at the University of Leipzig with a dissertation titled Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lepidopteren. Hatschek was deeply influenced by the works of Ernst Haeckel.

In 1885 he was appointed professor of zoology at Charles University in Prague, and from 1896 was a professor and director of the second zoological institute at the University of Vienna. Hatschek suffered from severe depression, which greatly affected his work in the latter stages of his life.

Hatschek is remembered for the so-called "trochophore theory", in which he explains the trochophore to be the larval form of a hypothetical organism- the "trochozoon".

In 1888 he split Frey and Leuckart's Coelenterata into three phyla: Spongiaria, Cnidaria and Ctenophora. From his research of amphioxus, the anatomical terms- "Hatschek's pit" and "Hatschek's nephridium" are derived.