This wealth and advice from Alexander von Humboldt, allowed Anton's father, Carl August (1806–1892), to devote himself to his various hobbies; travelling, folk music and insects.

Anton, the youngest son, read zoology and medicine at various German universities (Königsberg, Bonn, Jena and Berlin).

The attitudes of his father, a liberal one with interest in people, literature, music (Felix Mendelssohn was his godfather[2]) and science was to have a key role in Dohrn's own work as a promoter of scientific collaboration.

[6] Dohrn's ideas of zoology changed in the summer 1862 when he returned to study at Jena, where Ernst Haeckel introduced him to Darwin's work and theories.

Dohrn received his doctorate in 1865 at Breslau under Eduard Grube, and his Habilitation in 1868 at Jena with Rudolf Virchow, Ernst Haeckel and Carl Gegenbaur.

Dohrn's view of Haeckel's philosophical generalizations changed after he read Immanuel Kant and F. A. Lange's Geschichte des Materialismus (1866).

Dohrn's ideas on functional phylogenetics underlie some of the embryological hypotheses such as the origin of the vertebrate jaw from gill arches.

[3][7] From 1850 to 1852, the zoologist and geologist Carl Vogt had lived in Nice where he tried unsuccessfully to enlist support for a marine zoological station (one was later established as Observatoire Oceanologique de Villefranche).

Dohrn rented two rooms for the "Stazione Zoologica di Messina", but quickly realized the technical difficulties of studying marine life without a permanent structure and support facilities, such as trained personnel and a library.

Naples, with a population of 500,000 inhabitants, was one of the largest and most attractive cities of Europe and also had a considerable flow of tourists (30,000 a year) that could potentially visit the aquarium.

Dohrn overcame the doubts of the city authorities and persuaded them to give him, free-of-charge, a plot of land at the sea edge, in the beautiful Villa Comunale on the condition that he promised to build the Stazione Zoologica at his own expense.

In order to promote the international status of the Stazione and to guarantee its economic and hence political independence and freedom of research, Dohrn introduced a series of innovative measures to finance his project.

Firstly, the rental of work and research space (the "Bench system"), for an annual fee universities, governments, scientific institutions, private foundations or individuals could send one scientist to the Stazione for one year where he or she would find available all that was required to conduct research (laboratory space, animal supply, chemicals, an exceptional library and expert staff).

It might be said that international scientific collaboration in the modern sense was born at the Stazione, based on quick and free communication of ideas, methods and results.

The Carnegie Institution's Department of Marine Biology laboratory at Dry Tortugas, Florida placed the motor vessel Anton Dohrn in service in July 1911 for ocean science work.