Moritz Wagner: Biography, Facts and Career

Moritz Wagner (Bayreuth, 3 October 1813 – Munich, 31 May 1887) was a German explorer, collector, geographer and natural historian. A contemporary of Charles Darwin, he already accepted that species are not constant in time, but his formative biological work preceded Darwin's 1859 On the Origin of Species. At the end of his university studies, Wagner devoted three years (1836–1839) to the exploration of Algiers: and graduated with a doctorate in philosophy. While his travelogues were popular, he had found his scientific training insufficient, and in the early 1840s studied for another doctorate, in geology. In May 1843, Wagner toured the Lake Sevan region of Armenia with Armenian writer Khachatur Abovian. From 1852 to 1855, together with Carl Scherzer, Wagner travelled through North and Central America and the Caribbean. During his travels, he made important observations in natural history, which he later supplemented and developed: that geographical isolation could play a key role in speciation. However, his insistence that what later came to be called peripatric and allopatric speciation, not natural selection, was the main driving force in the evolution of species, led to his ideas on geographic isolation being disregarded, unti lrevalidated in the evolutionary synthesis of the mid-20th century. A marginal figure by the 1880s, Wagner committed suicide in Munich, aged 73. His brother Rudolf was a physiologist and anatomist.

Quick facts about Moritz Wagner

• Full name: Moritz Wagner
• Born: 1813-10-03
• Nationality: Kingdom of Bavaria
• Known as: Author
• Wikidata ID: Q68757

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