Wilhelm Haacke

Johann Wilhelm Haacke ( born August 23, 1855 in Clenze, † December 6, 1912 in Lüneburg ) was a German biologist and geneticist.

Haacke studied at the University of Jena Zoology, where he received his doctorate in 1878 at Ernst Haeckel. After that, he was an assistant in Jena and Kiel in 1881 and went to New Zealand. 1882 to 1884 he headed the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, before returning to Germany in 1886. He was from 1888 to 1893 scientific director of the Frankfurt Zoo. In 1890 he completed his habilitation at the Technical University of Darmstadt, was a lecturer in Darmstadt and later a high school teacher.

He has worked on jellyfish and corals and undertook breeding experiments with mice, confirming Gregor Mendel 's laws. In 1884 he discovered independently that the echidna lays eggs. He pursued Lamarckian ideas and coined the term orthogenesis. Together with Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert as an illustrator, he wrote the 1901 released " animal life of the world ". He was a member of Brehm's animal life.