Haeckel, ErnstHeinrichPhilippAugust

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Haeckel, ErnstHeinrichPhilippAugust (1834–1919)A German anatomist, zoologist, and field naturalist, who was appointed professor of zoology at the Zoological Institute, Jena, in 1865. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Darwinian theory of evolution and Darwin credited him with the success that theory enjoyed in Germany. Haeckel constructed genealogical trees for many living organisms and divided animals into Protozoa (single-celled) and Metazoa (multi-celled) groups. He was an accomplished field naturalist and is usually credited with having coined the word ‘ecology’ in his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, published in two volumes in 1866 (as the German word ökologie, from the Greek oikos, meaning ‘house’ and logos, meaning ‘discourse’).