Ernst Haeckel

Who was Ernst Haeckel?

Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel was a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including anthropogeny, ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and the kingdom Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularized 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' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures. As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträtsel, the genesis for the term "world riddle"; and Freedom in Science and Teaching to support teaching evolution.