Anton Dohrn
(Stettin, 1840-Munich, 1909) German zoologist.Raised in a bourgeois family, he carried out his studies in zoology at the German universities of Königsberg, Bonn, Jena and Berlin without much enthusiasm.This circumstance changed around 1862, when it landed in Jena; there Ernst Haeckel introduced him to the studies and theories of Charles Darwin.From that moment, Dohrn became a fervent admirer of the Darwinian theory of descent with modification, that is, the theory of evolution by natural selection.This is how he decided to dedicate his future life to collecting ideas and facts that supported the ideas of Darwinism.
Anton Dohrn
Dohrn obtained his doctorate in 1865, in Breslau, with a study on the anatomy of the hemiptera.Only three years later he obtained the authorization to teach at the University of Jena.As an embryologist he dealt mainly with insects and crustaceans, and sought to clarify their development from lower life forms, in accordance with Darwinian ideas.
At that time, comparatively, embryology was becoming the cornerstone of morphology and evolution, according to Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory: the idea that an organism during its development embryonic goes through the main stages of evolution of the evolutionary past of its species.Morphology became one of the main avenues in which zoologists sought expansion, and thus Darwinian theory developed in the last thirty years of the 19th century.Dohrn became a Darwinian morphologist who combined the evolutionism of Charles Darwin and the embryologism of Karl Ernst von Baer.
Dohrn worked on the Helgoland beach facility with Ernst Haeckel in 1865; in Hamburg in 1866; in Millport (Scotland), with David Robertson, in 1867 and 1868; and in Messina during the winter of 1868-1869, together with his Russian friend Nicolai Micloucho-Maclay.In Messina, these two scientists had the brilliant idea of covering the planet with a network of zoological research stations, similar to train stations, where scientists could stop, collect material, make observations and perform experiments, before moving to the next station.
In Messina, Dohrn rented a couple of rooms to install the first zoological station in that city (February, 1869), but he soon realized the difficulties involved in studying the marine world without a permanent structure (difficulties in collecting species, lack of storage tanks with seawater, lack of library and lack of technical assistance from qualified personnel).Faced with these inconveniences, Dohrn began to insist on the need for scientists to be able to work near the sea with all kinds of services ready for them: laboratory material, instruments, chemicals, books and recordings of where and when certain species could be found., as well as useful information on the conditions of the place.
He left Messina, his books, his equipment, his diaries and the portable aquarium he had brought from Scotland and, in 1870, He decided that Naples might be the ideal place for his station.This decision was due to the great biological richness of the Gulf of Naples and also to the possibility of creating a research institute of international relevance in a large city that had, itself, a strong international vocation.The foundation of the Naples Zoological Station occurred in March 1872.
His theoretical views are condensed in his 1875 work Ursprung der Wirbeltiere und das Prinzip des Funktionswechsels , in the which makes vertebrates descend from the annelids, and tried to explain the supposed appearance of new organs by the transformation of existing ones.The same opinions are extended and completed in the work Studien zur Urgeschichte des Wirbeltierkörpers (1882-1891).He also wrote a monograph on the pantopods of the Gulf of Naples (1881).
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