LAS Art Foundation

Prof Dr Michael Ohl

Artist
A person with short hair, a beard and glasses looks into the camera. She is wearing a blue shirt. The background is blurred and shows some buildings.

Michael Ohl studied biology, philosophy and history of science in Kiel and Göttingen. He is scientific head of the Hymenoptera Collection at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and was co-founder of the Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery there. He is also an adjunct professor at Humboldt University. In addition to his scientific work on insects, especially wasps, Ohl works on the theory and history of biology and especially on biological systematics and taxonomy. He regularly appears in various public formats and writes popular science non-fiction books. Most recently, he published Wespen - Ein Portrait (Wasps – A portrait) (Matthes und Seitz Berlin, 2023) and Expeditionen zu den Ersten ihrer Art - Außergewöhnliche Tiere und die Geschichte ihrer Entdeckung (Expeditions to the First of their kind – Unusual animals and the story of their discovery) (DTV, 2022). His book Die Kunst der Benennung (Matthes und Seitz Berlin, 2015) was translated into English and published by MIT as The Art of Naming in 2018.