Ernst Haeckel was born in Prussia in 1834 to well-educated, Protestant parents who raised him on the Romantic poetry of Friedrich Schiller and the natural philosophy of Wolfgang von Goethe. When he enrolled in medical school at Wurzburg in 1852, he came into contact with some of the scientific greats of the day, including pathologist Rudolf Virchow, a pioneer of cell theory, and Albert von Kolliker, a distinguished physiologist who introduced him to microscopic work. Still, Haeckel disliked medical school and nurtured fantasies of a career in marine biology; whenever possible, he found ways to take off on specimen-collecting trips to the seashore.