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 Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwins work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory claiming that an individual organisms biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species evolutionary development, or phylogeny.

Ernst Haeckel was born onFebruary 1834, in Potsdam . In 1852, Haeckel completed studies at the Domgymnasium, the cathedral high school of Merseburg. He then studied medicine in Berlin and Wrzburg, particularly with Albert von Klliker, Franz Leydig, Rudolf Virchow , and with the anatomistphysiologist Johannes Peter Mller . Together with Hermann Steudner he attended botany lectures in Wrzburg. In 1857, Haeckel attained a doctorate in medicine, , and afterwards he received a license to practice medicine. The occupation of physician appeared less worthwhile to Haeckel, after contact with suffering patients.

Source: Wikipedia