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Period: Jan 12, 1577 to
Jean-Baptiste van Helmont
Remembered today largely for his ideas on spontaneous generation, his 5-year tree experiment, and his introduction of the word "gas" (from the Greek word chaos) into the vocabulary of scientists. -
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Fancesco Redi
He was the first person to prove that spontaneous generation did not cause the growth of maggots in decaying meat, but they appeared from eggs deposited by flies, he did this in 1668. He used a theory called "spontaneous generation", a theory also known as Aristotelian abiogenesis. Redi took six jars, and divided them in two groups of three. In one experiment, in the first jar of each group, he put an unknown object; in the second, a dead fish; in the last, a raw chunk of veal. -
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John Needham
He was first exposed to natural philosophy while in seminary school and later published a paper which, while the subject was mostly about geology, described the mechanics of pollen and won recognition in the botany community.. He did experiments with gravy and later, tainted wheat, in containers. -
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lazzaro Spallanzani
He was an Italian Catholic priest, biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and essentially discovered animal echolocation. His research of biogenesis paved the way for the investigations of Louis Pasteur. He researched the theory about the spontaneous generation of cellular life in 1768. His experiment suggested that microbes move through the air and that they could be killed through boiling. -
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Louis Pasteur
He was a French chemist and microbiologist who was one of the most important founders of medical microbiology. He demonstrated fermentation is caused by the growth of micro-organisms, and the emergent growth of bacteria in nutrient broths is not due to spontaneous generation, but rather to biogenesis.