Wilhelm Haacke, South Australian museum's first director (1882-84), solves mystery of echidna reproduction

South Australia Institute Museum's first director Johann Wilhelm Haacke solved the mystery of echidnas' reproduction. Later in Germany, Haacke developed discredited theories on evolution. 
Image courtesy Wikipedia and New Scientist

(Johann) Wilhelm Haacke, the first director (1882-84) of the South Australian Institute Museum succeeding curator Frederick Waterhouse, added to natural knowledge by clearing the mystery about echidnas.

With a specimen sent to the museum by the naturalist on Kangaroo Island in 1884, Haacke proved that echidnas were oviparous (the females lay egg with little or no embryonic development) not viviparous (developing the embryo within the mother’s body).

Haacke was a German zoologist, born in Clenze, Lower Saxony, who studied zoology at the University of Jena, earning his doctorate in 1878. Afterwards, he worked as an assistant at the universities of Jena and Kiel.

In 1881, Haacke emigrated to New Zealand, working at the museums in Dunedin, under professor Thomas Parker, and professor Julius von Haast, founder of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. The next year Haacke took over running the South Australian Institute Museum from Frederick Waterhouse who filled the role as curator.

Haack, in 1883, recommended that the South Australian Institute Museum be renamed the South Australian Museum. (This was not accepted and didn't happen until 1939 when the museum was granted autonomy from the state's art gallery and library that also had grown out of the South Australian Institute.) Haack did succeed in recommending that the position of curator be changed to director.

Haack was a founding member of the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia. His work attracted some criticism, as did his bombastic self promotion. He resigned his museum position in 1884, after disputes with the museum's management but didn’t leave South Australia. He served as zoologist with the 1885 Geographic Society of Australasia’s expedition to the Fly River in Papua New Guinea.

In 1886, Haack announced his imminent departure for Europe, and was invited by a large deputation of South Australian German settlers to represent them at an Allgemeiner Deutscher Kongress in Berlin that September but declined. He left South Australia around 1886 without fanfare.

From 1888 to 1893, he was director of the zoo in Frankfurt-am-Maim and later was a lecturer at Darmstadt University of Technnology. (until 1897). Later, he worked as a private scholar and grammar school teacher.

Haacke is remembered for research into oviparity in monotremes (the three main groups of living mammals) and studies into the structure of jellyfish and corals. In 1893, he coined the evolutionary term “orthogenesis” that, unlike Charles Darwin’s natural selection, organisms had an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction.

Haacke studied under Ernest Haeckel but turned against him for holding Darwinist views. Haacke believed cells had hereditary units called gemmaria that explain neo-Lamarckian inheritance. His theory of epimorphism was that evolution was directed towards perfection.