DARWIN'S OPPONENTS: SEMPER AND MURRAY, 1863–1880

Debate over Darwin's claimed solution to the problem of coral reef formation continued to gather momentum for more than a century. First ignited by Carl Semper, it was fanned by John Murray, and then erupted into what became a rather captious confrontation in Darwin's declining years, and even after his death, with the aggressive Alexander Agassiz, the most vocal among a number of dissentients.

In the years 1857–65 the naturalist and explorer Carl Gottfried Semper (1832–93), having graduated in natural science from the University of Würzburg, travelled throughout the Spanish Philippines, spending a year in 1862 on Pelelui and the other five major atolls in the Pelew, or Palau, group (now Belau) a little to the east of the island of Mindanao. Semper had read Darwin's 1842 volume and in 1863 sent to a German zoological journal a short twelve-page Reisebericht (Travel Report), in which he took issue with Darwin's central hypothesis of subsidence as the primary determinant of reef formation, asserting that the irregular configuration of the Pelew island chain with areas of both elevation and possible subsidence created serious problems for Darwin's theory.

On his return to Würzburg, Semper joined the university staff and in 1869 was appointed director of its zoological institute. In 1877 he was invited to Boston to present his researches to the Lowell Institute, a philanthropic foundation that sponsored lectures by distinguished persons.