This day in history: Ernst Haeckel was born on this day in 1834. Haeckel was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ecology, phylum, phylogeny, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory (human embryos replay the evolutionary history of their species as they develop). Haeckel produced drawings of embryos in various stages of evolution and they are now considered to be fraudulent...though this did not stop these drawings from languishing in text books for 100 years.
Haeckel was also a eugenicist who also believed in euthanasia. "Haeckel admired the Spartans because they practiced infanticide of abnormal infants, to improve the biological quality of their race - 'a practice of advantage both to the infants destroyed and to the community.' [The Wonders of Life, cited in Gasman p91] He recommended that sickly adults should also be eliminated to stop them spreading their genes, and a commission should be set up to decide the fate of individuals. The unlucky ones would be put to death by painless and rapid poison (Wonders of Life pp 118-119, cited Gasman p 95)." Source
Haeckel believed that certain races were inferior, and thus closer to animals. "With Haeckel's encouragement and advice, a Dutch scientist, Bernelot Moens, tried to artificially inseminate a black woman with the sperm from an ape." [Godless by Ann Coulter]
Haeckel's mistakes were realized by others 100 years ago:
"Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was one of the earliest and most influential followers of Darwin in Germany. In his Generelle Morphologie, published in 1866, seven years after the Origin of Species first appeared, he applied the doctrine of evolution, and especially the theory of natural selection, to the whole field of vertebrate morphology. Beyond question Haeckel overapplied the theory and in a sense weakened its influence by his rather uncritical use of materials. His writings have been translated into most languages and 'are popularly believed to represent the best scientific thought on the matter.' Biologists today, however, are apt to look askance at Haeckel's works and to consider that they did more harm than good to Darwinism." [Readings in evolution, genetics, and eugenics - 1921]
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