Wulf Dietrich Haacke was born in Windhoek, Namibia, on 15 December 1936. His parents were German and in 1929 and 1930 they immigrated to the former South West Africa, where they were married. Wulf spent the first 20 years of his life in Namibia. His first job, in 1955, was as an assistant to the mineralogist at Tsumeb Mine in Na-mibia. In 1957 he moved to South Africa where he studied for a BSc degree at the Uni-versity of Pretoria. Wulf took up a post in the Section of Locust Control and Research at the Department of Agriculture in February 1960, and in June 1961 he was appointed as head of the Department of Lower Vertebrates and Invertebrates at the Transvaal Museum. He was head of the department, later re-named Department of Herpetology, from 1961 until his retirement in 2002, a period of over 40 years. During that time the herpetological collection at the Transvaal Museum increased in size from 26 000 to 85 000 specimens.