Martin Rathke

Martin Heinrich Rathke (1793 to 1860) was a German anatomist and embryologist, recognized with Karl Ernst von Baer and Christian Heinrich Pander as one of the founders of modern embryology. Born in Danzig, he studied medicine and natural history at Göttingen and Berlin and received his medical doctorate in 1818. He was professor of physiology, pathology and semiotics at Dorpat from 1828, and from 1835 until his death professor of zoology and anatomy at Königsberg. He was the first to describe the branchial clefts and gill arches in the embryos of mammals and birds, and in 1839 he described the embryonic pouch from which the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland develops, now called Rathke's pouch. He also showed that the amphioxus is a separate taxon and not the larva of a mollusk.