Caspar Friedrich Wolff

Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1733 to 1794) was a German physiologist and embryologist widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern embryology. Born in Berlin, he took his medical degree at Halle in 1759 with the dissertation Theoria Generationis, which revived the theory of epigenesis proposed by Aristotle and William Harvey against the prevailing view that organisms were preformed in the seed. Albrecht von Haller was a powerful opponent and his views were poorly received. He served as a field doctor in the Prussian Army during the Seven Years War and, with help from Leonhard Euler, obtained the chair of anatomy at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1767. He discovered the primitive kidneys, the mesonephros, and their ducts, which are called Wolffian bodies and ducts. His 1768 to 1769 work on the development of the intestine foreshadowed the germ layer theory, and Karl Ernst von Baer called it a masterpiece of scientific observation.