Background
Karl Bogislaus Reichert was born on December 20, 1811, in Rastenburg, East Prussia (now Kętrzyn, Poland). Reichert’s father, mayor of Rastenburg, died on the day his son was born.
University of Königsberg, Kaliningrad, Russia
From 1831 Reichert studied at the University of Konigsberg, where he was a student of embryologist Karl Ernst Bae.
Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Reichert studied at the University of Berlin, where he became the protege of Friedrich Schlemm and Johannes Muller. He graduated in 1836 with a dissertation on the gill arches of the vertebrate embryos.
anatomist chemist embryologist histologist scientist
Karl Bogislaus Reichert was born on December 20, 1811, in Rastenburg, East Prussia (now Kętrzyn, Poland). Reichert’s father, mayor of Rastenburg, died on the day his son was born.
From 1831 Reichert studied at the University of Konigsberg, where he was a student of embryologist Karl Ernst Baer. However, he then continued his education at the military medical school (Friedrich-Wilhelm-Institut) and at the University of Berlin, where he became the protege of Friedrich Schlemm and Johannes Muller. He graduated in 1836 with a dissertation on the gill arches of the vertebrate embryos.
After the graduation from the University of Berlin, Alexander von Humboldt secured Reichert a leave for scientific work and eventually freedom from his military obligations. As a prosector of anatomy in Muller’s department, Reichert was very active both in research and in preparing an annual review of histology for the Archiv fur Anatomie. In 1843 he was called to the University of Dorpat as professor of anatomy. Ten years later he became a professor of physiology at Breslau, succeeding K. T. E. von Siebold. After the death of Muller in 1858, Reichert occupied the chair of anatomy and remained in Berlin for the rest of his life.
Reichert’s greatest accomplishment was the introduction into embryology of the cell theory soon after its formulation by Schwann. Studying the evolution of frogspawn, he described with great accuracy the consecutive stages of its development, demonstrating that globules formed during the segmentation of the vitellus are cells and that all subsequent parts of the embryonic organs derive from the cleavage cells of the embryo.
Reichert's discovery of true homologies between the middle-ear ossicles and primitive structures of the splanchnocranium of reptiles and other lower vertebrates has been confirmed by recent paleozoological research, which has found all the intermediary stages that Reichert had envisaged. This was a brilliant linking of embryology with comparative anatomy and physiology, an example of a transformation of the original structure connected to a change of function.
In his last years Reichert, holder of a very important chair and editor of a major periodical, and thus formally a leader in his field, became completely isolated because of his stubborn opposition to Haeckel’s theory of the homology of germinal layers throughout the animal kingdom, the concept of protoplasm and new developments of the cell theory, and Darwin’s theory of the origin of species.
Like other biologists, Reichert erroneously believed that the granules in the yolk of the egg also were individual cells. On the other hand, he carefully distinguished the formative and the nutritive parts of the yolk, calling them Bildungsdotter and Nahrungsdotter. He also made valuable observations on the evolution of the tadpole, especially of the head, and presented many general reflections on the formation of different structures by means of invagination which foreshadowed, to some degree, Haeckel’s gastraea theory.
Reichert was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the Russian Academy of Sciences.