Ernst Haeckel

Born in 1834, Ernst Haeckel studied medicine but became best known as a zoologist, professor at the University of Jena, and one of the most influential interpreters of Charles Darwin’s ideas in the German-speaking world. He described thousands of species, worked closely on marine life such as radiolarians and jellyfish, and gave science durable terms including ecology, phylum, and phylogeny.

Haeckel was also a gifted visual artist. His detailed plates of plants and sea creatures, later gathered in Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), made him famous far beyond academic biology and helped bring scientific imagery into popular culture and design.

At the same time, parts of his legacy remain controversial. Some of his evolutionary and embryological claims were heavily disputed, and later readers have criticized the way he linked science, philosophy, and social ideas. Even so, he remains a major figure in the history of biology because of the scale of his scientific work, his influence on evolutionary thought, and the lasting beauty of his illustrations.