Carl Vogt

August Christoph Carl Vogt (5 July 1817 to 5 May 1895) was a German scientist, philosopher, popularizer of science and politician who emigrated to Switzerland. Born in Giessen, he studied medicine at Giessen and Bern, earned his doctorate in 1839 and then worked with Louis Agassiz in Neuchâtel. He became professor of zoology at Giessen in 1847 and in 1852 professor of geology, and afterwards also of zoology, at the University of Geneva. His publications covered zoology, geology and physiology, including works on amphibia, reptiles, molluscs and crustaceans and on the invertebrate fauna of the Mediterranean, and in 1842 he discovered the mechanism of apoptosis, programmed cell death, while studying the development of the tadpole of the midwife toad. Charles Darwin mentions his support for the theory of evolution in the introduction to The Descent of Man. He was a proponent of scientific materialism and atheism, sat as a left-wing representative in the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848 to 1849, and defended polygenism, the view that each human race evolved from a different type of ape, against most Darwinists, who held a single origin. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1869 and died in Geneva.