author
Ludwig Plate
1862–1937
A German zoologist shaped by Ernst Haeckel’s ideas, he became known for defending Darwinism while working at a moment when evolutionary theory was still being argued over and reworked. His career also reflects some of the more troubling scientific and social debates of his era.
1 Audiobook
Die Tier- und Pflanzenwelt des Süsswassers. Erster Band.
by F. A. (François Alphonse) Forel, August Gruber, Friedrich Ludwig, W. (Walter) Migula, Ludwig Plate, Julius Vosseler, Wilhelm Weltner
About the author
Born in Bremen in 1862, Ludwig Hermann Plate was a German zoologist who studied mathematics and natural sciences in Bonn and Jena, where he attended lectures by Ernst Haeckel. He later became one of Haeckel’s best-known students and eventually succeeded him in Jena as professor of zoology and curator of the Phyletic Museum.
Plate wrote widely on evolution, heredity, and zoology, and is often remembered for his strong defense of Darwinian natural selection before genetics had fully taken shape in modern evolutionary biology. Sources also credit him with coining the term "pleiotropy," now a standard concept in genetics.
He died in Jena in 1937. Accounts of his life also note his connection to social Darwinist and racial-hygiene movements, an important part of the historical record that places his scientific work in the wider and often disturbing intellectual climate of early 20th-century Europe.