Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold

Prof Karl (Carl) Theodor Ernst von Siebold FRS(For) HFRSE (16 February 1804 – 7 April 1885) was a German physiologist and zoologist.

[1] Von Siebold studied medicine and science chiefly at the University of Berlin (under K. A. Rudolphi) and also at Göttingen (under Johann Friedrich Blumenbach), submitting a thesis on the metamorphosis of the salamander.

In 1831 he began to practice medicine in Heilsberg, East Prussia (now Lidzbark Warmiński), moving in 1834 to Königsberg, and then in the same year to be Director of the Midwifery School in Danzig.

Siebold was the originator, after Cuvier, of the first important reforms in systematic zoology, and established the unicellular nature of the Protozoa, which he first combined into a phylum.

His scientific accomplishments included (in 1851) collaborating with Theodor Bilharz on the first description of the blood-fluke Schistosoma haematobium,[8] (in 1853) the elucidation of the life cycle of the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus,[9] (in 1854) the suggestion that the cercariae of the fluke Fasciola hepatica were the infective stage which passed from the invertebrate to the vertebrate host,[10] and (in 1856) the discovery of parthenogenesis in insects.