Jürgen Haffer (9 December 1932 in Berlin – 26 April 2010 in Essen) was a German ornithologist, biogeographer, and geologist.
He obtained a Diploma in 1956 and continued on for a doctoral degree in 1957 at the University of Göttingen - working on "Early heterodont Lamellibranchs of the Rhineland Devonian".
[1] He obtained employment with Mobil Oil as a field geologist and went to remote places like lowland Colombia and lived in South and North America, Iran, Egypt, and Norway.
During his stay in Colombia he met Maria Kluge, a teacher in Bogotá with an interest in Amazonia, marrying her in 1959.
In close communication with evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr since the early 1960s, Haffer formulated his ideas on the diversification of birds and the effects of barriers.