Ludwig Heck

Ludwig Heck (back left) with John Hagenbeck (back right), Asian woman, children and an elephant. (c. 1931)

Ludwig Franz Friedrich Georg Heck (11 August 1860 – 17 July 1951) was a German zoologist who served as the director of Berlin Zoo from 1888 to 1931. He was the father of the zoologists Lutz and Heinz Heck. Heck was a national socialist and on his 80th birthday he was personally awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science by Adolf Hitler. Heck contributed to a revision of Brehm's Tierleben and a species of monkey, Heck's macaque and a subspecies of the long-tailed finch Poephila acuticauda hecki are named after him.