Ludwig Hermann Plate (16 August 1862 – 16 November 1937) was a German

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

and student of Ernst Haeckel. He wrote a "thorough and extensive defence" of Darwinism, but before Mendel's work had been assimilated in the

modern synthesis Modern synthesis or modern evolutionary synthesis refers to several perspectives on evolutionary biology, namely: * Modern synthesis (20th century), the term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942 to denote the synthesis between Mendelian genetics and s ...

. Born in Bremen, Plate studied mathematics and natural sciences

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

and in

Jena Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...

, where he attended the lectures of Ernst Haeckel. In 1888, he achieved the 'Habilitation' in zoology at the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

. He was offered the Chair of Zoology at

Jena University The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The un ...

in 1909 through the help of Haeckel, and also became director of the Jena "Phyletisches Museum". Levit, Georgy S; Olsson, Lennart. (2007). ''Evolution on Rails Mechanisms and Levels of Orthogenesis''. In Volker Wissemann. ''Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology 11/2006''. Universitätsverlag Göttingen. pp. 113-115. He coined the term Pleiotropy.

Evolutionary views

Plate was a proponent of what he called ''old-Darwinism'' or ''orthoevolution'', which included a supposedly directed form of natural selection, ''orthoselection''. According to Plate, old-Darwinism follows the ideas of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

but also integrates other mechanisms of evolution. He attempted to combine

Lamarckism Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...

and

orthogenesis Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is an obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some go ...

into a unified framework. Many of the factors of the

of the early 20th century were first mentioned by Plate. He held that random

mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA replication, DNA or viral repl ...

and natural selection have a major role in evolution. He also acknowledged population thinking. He differed from the modern synthesis in accepting non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution such as the Lamarckian

inheritance of acquired characteristics Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

and orthogenesis. Plate coined the term ''orthoselection''. This term was later used by modern synthesis theorists such as Julian Huxley and Bernard Rensch. In his later writings he incorporated research from

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

into his evolutionary writings.

Legacy

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of Chilean lizard, '' Liolaemus platei'', is named in his honor.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Plate", p. 208).

Publications

*''Die Anatomie und Phylogenie der Chitonen'' (1901). *''Über die Bedeutung des Darwin'schen Selektionsprincips und Probleme der Artbildung'' (1903). *''Selektionprinzip und Problem der Artbildung: ein Handbuch der Darwinismus'' (1913). *''Die Abstammungslehre: Tatsachen, Theorien, Einwände und Folgerungen in kurzer Darstellung'' (1925).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plate, Ludwig 1862 births 1937 deaths Evolutionary biologists 20th-century German zoologists Lamarckism Orthogenesis Scientists from Bremen