CHAPTER W 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE AND SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES 

 OF KARL MAKSIMOVICH BAER 



If K. F. Wolff is considered the central personality 

 in embryology in the second half of the eighteenth century, 

 then in the first half of the nineteenth century tV 

 Russian academician K. M. Baer was most significant. Baer 

 devoted his long life totally to the service of science. 

 Starting with questions of zoology, comparative anatomy, and 

 especially embryology, Baer later concentrated on geographic 

 problems, applied zoology and especially ichthyology, 

 ethography, and finally the methodology of the natural 

 sciences, especially biology (81). The limitations of the 

 present book permits us to judge only Baer's embryological 

 work, with which he left the deepest and most permanent 

 mark. A short biographical sketch will preface discussion 

 of Baer's embryological investigations and his related 

 theoretical ideas. 



Karl Maksimovich Baer was born on February 17, 179-2 in 

 Pip in the neighborhood of Jerwen in Estonia. Receiving his 

 early education at home, Baer then spent four years in the 

 middle school in Revel (now Tallin). In 1810 he was admitted 

 to the medical faculty of the university in Dorpat (now Tartu) . 

 Among the professors of Dorpat University who had an influence 

 on the young Baer were (Karl Friedrich von) Ledebour, who 

 taught zoology, botany, geology and mineralogy, and especially 

 Karl Friedrich Burdach, who taught physiology and the history 

 of evolution 



In 1812, during the Napoleonic wars, where the army of 

 Napoleon's General Macdonald besieged Riga, Baer and other 

 Dorpat medical students volunteered to go to the fighting 

 area, where they worked under very difficult conditions. 

 They struggled with a typhus epidemic, and Baer himself nearly 

 died of the disease. In 1814 he finished his medical education, 



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