Ernst Ehlers

Ernst Heinrich Ehlers (11 November 1835 to 31 December 1925) was a German zoologist born in Lüneburg. He studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Göttingen and earned his doctorate in 1861, influenced there by Rudolf Wagner and Wilhelm Moritz Keferstein. In 1869 he became a full professor of zoology, comparative anatomy and veterinary medicine at the University of Erlangen, and from 1874 to 1919 he was professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in Göttingen. In 1890 he was one of the founders of the Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft, the German Zoological Society. He was a leading authority on polychaetes and is credited with describing many invertebrate species new to science, and the polychaete genus Ehlersia, of the family Syllidae, is named after him.