German embryologist and cytologist who was the first to recognize that the fusion of the nuclei of the sperm and ovum was the essential event in fertilization.

After studying medicine and zoology at Jena, Zürich, and Bonn, he obtained a lectureship in anatomy at the University of Jena (1875) and was elected to a professorship there (1881). From 1888 to 1921 he was professor of anatomy and evolutionary history at the University of Berlin and director of the Anatomisch-Biologische Institut.

Among his important investigations were studies of nuclear transmittal of hereditary characters, biogenetic theory, and the effect of radium rays on somatic and germ cells. With his brother, Richard von Hertwig, he investigated the formation of the coelom (body cavity) in multicellular animals and wrote several papers on the germ-layer theory, questioning the proposition that all organs and tissues derive variously from three basic tissue layers.