Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel was born in Prussia in 1834 and trained as a physician before turning to zoology and marine biology. He became Darwin's chief promoter in Germany, mapping evolutionary relationships across all life and coining terms that anchor the field: ecology, ontogeny, phylogeny. But his "Biogenetic Law" — the claim that embryos replay their species' evolution — rested on drawings of human development that were wrong, possibly falsified, and the theory collapsed under scrutiny. His Kunstformen der Natur, over a hundred intricate illustrations of sea creatures, became a landmark of Art Nouvea…