Review: Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud, by Nick Hopwood

Abstract

Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud . By Nick Hopwood. 2015. University of Chicago Press. (ISBN 978-0-226-04694-5). 388 pp. Hardcover. $45.00. Flip through biology textbooks, old or new, and chances are that you will find an illustration of vertebrate embryos arranged in rows and columns (see cover). This particular image, an embryo grid, is traced back to the work of Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) and remains the single most published illustration in biology texts; no other diagram has proved so prevalent and resilient. Nick Hopwood's Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud takes us on a journey of rich historical insight surrounding the origin and evolution of Haeckel's embryo grid. Hopwood is a professor at the University of Cambridge, where he studies embryonic development, the history of biology, and the visual culture of science. Having written a variety of scholarly articles about the history of embryology, Hopwood is no stranger to Haeckel's intriguing story, and Haeckel's Embryos presents a culmination (but not simply a repeat) of his previous publications. Hopwood provides the context for us to understand how Haeckel designed his drawings to mediate between a general …