The greatest of the popularisers was Ernst Haeckel, a German who in 1862 published The Natural History of Creation. This, a very readable polemic in favour of Darwin, just three years after the Origin and spelling out its implications, went through nine editions by the end of the century and was translated into twelve languages. DieWelträtsel, translated into English in 1900 as The Riddle of the Universe, and which explained the new cosmology, sold 100,000 copies in German and as many in English.41 Haeckel was far more widely read than Darwin, and became for a time equally famous–people
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