The Contributions of Naturalist Fritz Müller to the History of Science and Biology Teaching

Abstract

Fritz Müller (1822-1897), a German naturalist who lived in Brazil in the 19th century, corresponded with Charles Darwin (1809-1882) for seventeen years, and is known in traditional historiography as the ‘Brazilian who corresponded with Darwin’. In this work, we realized that Müller, from a simple ‘corresponding’ and defender of Darwinian ideas, should be regarded as a researcher, in partnership with Darwin and frequent dialogue with the British scholar, helped to establish the theories of development in the 19th century. In this sense, we hereby present a biographical trajectory of Müller in order to contribute with a contemporary historiographical vision for the teaching of biology in the twenty-first century.