Berthold Hatschek

Berthold Hatschek

Berthold Hatschek (3 April 1854 – 18 January 1941) was an Austrian zoologist remembered for embryological and morphological studies of invertebrates.

He studied zoology in Vienna under Carl Claus (1835-1899), and in Leipzig with Rudolf Leuckart (1822-1898). He gained his doctorate at the University of Leipzig with a dissertation titled Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lepidopteren. Hatschek was deeply influenced by the works of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919).

In 1885 he was appointed professor of zoology at Charles University in Prague, and from 1896 was a professor and director of the second zoological institute at the University of Vienna. Hatschek suffered from severe depression, which greatly affected his work in the latter stages of his life.^[1][2]

Hatschek is remembered for the so-called "trochophore theory", in which he explains the trochophore to be the larval form of a hypothetical organism- the "trochozoon" (which in adult form corresponded to a trochophore-like rotifer, and was the suggested common ancestor of almost all bilateral, metazoan lifeforms).^[3][4]

In 1888 he split Frey and Leuckart's Coelenterata into three phyla: Spongiaria, Cnidaria and Ctenophora.^[5][6] From his research of amphioxus, the anatomical terms- "Hatschek's pit" and "Hatschek's nephridium" are derived.^[7]

Selected writings

• Studien über Entwicklungsgeschichte der Anneliden. Ein Beitrag zur Morphologie der Bilaterien, 1878.
• Studien über entwicklung des Amphioxus, 1881.
• Lehrbuch der Zoologie : eine morphologische Übersicht des Thierreiches zur Einführung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft, 1888.
• "The Amphioxus and its development", translated into English, 1893.
• Das acromerit des Amphioxus, 1906.
• Das neue Zoologische System, 1911.^[8]

References