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 Nouveau. He also wrote The Riddles of the Universe, embraced scientific racism and Social Darwinism, and in 1914 became the first to call the Great War the "first" World War. He died in 1919.