24 Facts About Anton Dohrn

Felix Anton Dohrn FRS FRSE was a prominent German Darwinist and the founder and first director of the first marine-biological and zoological research station in the world, the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy.

Anton Dohrn worked on embryology and examined vertebrate origins in terms of functional phylogeny and proposed a principle of succession of functions in 1875 on how one organ could become the basis for the evolution of another of an entirely different function.

Anton Dohrn was an elected International Member of the American Philosophical Society.

Anton Dohrn was born in Stettin, Prussian Province of Pomerania, into a wealthy middle-class family.

Anton Dohrn's brother Heinrich Wolfgang Ludwig Dohrn was a zoologist.

Anton Dohrn received an early education which was based on humanist ideals.

Anton Dohrn went to study medicine and zoology and Koenigsberg, Bonn, Jena and Berlin.

Anton Dohrn gained his doctorate from Breslau in November 1865 with his thesis "On the Anatomy of Hemiptera".

Anton Dohrn visited Heligoland along with Ernst Haeckel to examine marine organisms for the first time.

In 1867 Anton Dohrn visited Millport, Isle of Cumbrae as a guest of David Robertson who had founded the Millport Biological Station.

Anton Dohrn became a fervent defender of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Anton Dohrn saw comparative anatomy, physiology and embryology as means to determine the evolutionary history of various organisms.

Anton Dohrn received his doctorate in 1865 at Breslau under Eduard Grube, and his Habilitation in 1868 at Jena with Rudolf Virchow, Ernst Haeckel and Carl Gegenbaur.

In 1870 Anton Dohrn was called up to serve in the Franco-Prussian War.

In 1874 Anton Dohrn married their eldest daughter, sixteen-year-old Maria Baranowska.

Anton Dohrn realised how useful it would be for scientists to arrive at a location and find a ready to use laboratory.

Anton Dohrn rented two rooms for the "Stazione Zoologica di Messina", but quickly realized the technical difficulties of studying marine life without a permanent structure and support facilities, such as trained personnel and a library.

In 1870 Anton Dohrn decided that Naples would be a better place for his Station.

Anton Dohrn overcame the doubts of the city authorities and persuaded them to give him, free-of-charge, a plot of land at the sea edge, in the beautiful Villa Comunale on the condition that he promised to build the Stazione Zoologica at his own expense.

Anton Dohrn opened the station to visiting scientists in September 1873, and to the general public in January 1874.

In 1875 Anton Dohrn published Der Ursprung der Wirbelthiere und das Princip des Functionswechsels: Genealogische Skizzen which proposed the "change of function" theory of the origin of vertebrates.

Anton Dohrn suggested that an organ could have secondary functions in addition to their primary function and that the subsidiary functions could become primary over evolutionary time.

Anton Dohrn contributed his own library and obtained donations of books from publishers and authors, including Darwin.

Anton Dohrn suffered from heart problems in his last years and died in Munich on September 26,1909.