Melchior Johann Vulpius was born in Berlin in 1843; strongly influenced by the works of Charles Darwin, he studied biology and history, eventually moving to the United States to pursue the burgeoning field of palaeontology.  (See: the bone wars; you can look it up on wikipedia.)  And it was out in the wilds of the american mid-west that he had his first encounter with the supernatural: Coyote.  At first, Melchior was merely impressed to meet anyone (let alone a native) capable of keeping up with him on matters of anatomy and biomechanics - but when Coyote offered him a practical demonstration, he was... somewhat startled is perhaps an understatement for his reaction to being turned into a coyote.  And, with the twin carrots of "I can make you human again" and "I can teach you how to do that", it was trivial for Coyote to forge a completely open-ended deal.

  Johann spent the next several decades learning magic, trying to help the native american tribes, and making more deals with a variety of other native animal spirits - which was all well and good until he paid off Coyote enough to be allowed to return to Germany.  There, he met a spirit of a different sort: an actual fae Lady, a summer sylph sidhe named Austris who offered to teach him flight in exchange for "some minor favors".  And, used to dealing with the more free-wheeling american indian spirits (and very much smitten), he foolishly agreed.  He's spent much of his time since then serving the interests of Summer - often reluctantly, but never entirely unwillingly.

  Inbetween decades-long chunks of time spent in the nevernever, he has helped with the work of the Center for the Promotion of the Rational Worldview, dug up dinosaurs in China, and produced a vast profusion of papers (frequently under pseudonyms, or published in the name of some worthy grad student) on anatomy and motion of a variety of animals - living, extinct, and occasionally invented wholesale (he's been brought in as a consultant to a few movie studios that've actually been concerned with making their monsters look and move right).