Otto Jaekel

 Otto Max Johannes Jaekel (21 February 1863 – 6 March 1929) was a German paleontologist and geologist.
Biography.
Jaekel was born in Neusalz (Nowa Sól), Prussian Silesia, the son of a builder and the youngest of seven children. He studied at the "Ritterakademie" in Liegnitz (Legnica). After graduating in 1883, he came to study geology and paleontology under Ferdinand Roemer in Breslau (Wrocław) until 1885. Karl von Zittel awarded a PhD to Jaekel in Munich in 1886. Between 1887 and 1889, Jaekel was an assistant of E.W. Benecke at the Geologisch-Paläontologisches Institut in Straßburg, where he received his Habilitation. 
He worked at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and at the Geologisch-Paläontologisches Museum (a combined post) from 1894. Jaekel was considered as an ordinary professor of geology at the University of Vienna in 1903, but this was blocked by intrigue. Between 1906 and 1928, Jaekel was a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he founded the German Paleontological Society in 1912. 
After his retirement in Greifswald, Otto Jaekel accepted a position at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in 1928. He died after a short and unexpected illness in the German Hospital in Beijing.
Work.
As a paleontologist, Jaekel specialized in the study of fossil vertebrates, particularly fishes and reptiles. However, 27 of his publications were about echinodermata. In addition, he wrote about politics, law, literature and art. He was an accomplished painter, and used his skills to produce landscape paintings that illustrate the geology of the Pomeranian coast.
Jaekel's most prominent contribution to paleontology was his supervision of the excavation of several dozen "Plateosaurus" skeletons near Halberstadt, between 1909 and 1922. He described a second species of "Plateosaurus" in 1914.
During World War I, in which he served as a "Hauptmann" (Captain) in the 210th Prussian Infantry Regiment, he attempted to re-start excavations at the southern Belgian town of Bernissart, where several dozen specimens of the dinosaur "Iguanodon" had been dug up in the 1870s. Although he eventually succeeded in persuading the German occupation authorities to support his initiative, the attempt had to be abandoned after the German army surrendered in November 1918.