Timeline Activity

  • 11,550 BCE

    biological knowledge of Egyptians

    -they had an understanding of the preservative properties in herbs required for embalming and mummifying
    -they were well aware of the medicinal value in certain pants
  • 2700 BCE

    Biological knowledge of Chinese

    -possessed medical knowledge and described the theraputic powers of numerous medicinal plants and important food plants such as the soybean
  • 2500 BCE

    Biological knowledge of Indians

    -had a well developed science of agriculture
    -plants were not only a food source; a document described the use of 960 medicinal plants and included information on topics such as anatomy, physiology, pathology and obstetrics
  • 1800 BCE

    History of biology

    -it is not known exactly when the study of biology originated but early humans had some knowledge of the animals and plants around them.
    -much of earliest history of biology derived from Assyrian and Babylonian bas-reliefs showing cultivated plants and from carvings depicting veterinary medicine
  • 700 BCE

    Theories of humankind and the origin of life

    -the universe contained a creative force called physis
    -the world and all living things in it were made of earth and a gas like substance called aperion, which created earths 4 elements
    -the first animals were fishes which left water to dry land and they gave rise to other animals by transmutation
  • 600 BCE

    The Greco-Roman world

    -Greek philosophers believed that every event has a cause and that cause produces an effect
    -the existence of natural law that governs the universe can be comprehended by humans through the use of their powers of observation and deduction
    -they established the science of biology but their greatest contribution made to science was the idea of rational thought
  • 300 BCE

    Arab domination of biology

    -biology was essentially an arab science
    -they discovered works of Aristotle, translated the works into arabic, studied them, then wrote commentaries about them.
    -emphasized the unity of nature and recognized relationships between different groups of organisms
  • 1400

    The renaissance

    -Leonardo da vinci studied human form
    -while disecting animals and examining their structure he compared them to the human structure
    -homology became an important concept to uniting diverse groups of animals into distinct units and the significance to evolution
  • 1500

    The water microscope

    -the water microscope magnified through a lens at the end of a tube, the tube was filled with water
  • 1500

    Telescopes

    -lenses were used in telescopes
    -Galileo worked with lenses and developed a telescope with a focus device then viewed the stars
  • compound microscope

    compound microscope
    -used several lenses in a tube and discovered it magnifies beyond the capability of a magnifying glass
    -an image magnified by a single lens can be further magnified with more lenses
  • what is cell theory

    -Robert Hook was the first to describe cells and give them a name
    -in 1674 Leeuwenhoek looked at pond water with a powerful magnifying lens and discovered animalcules
    in 1858 Schleiden and Schwann viewed a nucleus in plant and animal cells and discovered all living things were made up of cells
  • Francesco Redi

    -was an italian physician who demonstrated that the presence of maggots in decaying meat does not result result from spontaneous generation but from eggs laid on the meat by flies
  • The father of the microscope

    The father of the microscope
    -Leeuwenhoek grounded 50 lenses which had a linear magnifying power of 500
    -his famous experiment was viewing lake water and discovered bacteria
  • John Needham

    -studied microscopic organisms and theories of spontaneous generation from 1746 to 1749.
    -in 1750 he created his own theory of spontaneous generation and challenged redi's findings and concluded that life was created from nonlife.
  • Lazzaro Spallanzani

    -reviewed and concluded that redi's and needhams dad was not accurate
    -constructed is own experiment by boiling broth and sealing one jar and leaving the other open and concluded air was the primary for spontaneous generation
  • The invention of achromatic lens

    The invention of achromatic lens
    -discovered that using a second lens of different shape and refracting properties can realign colors
    -light bends at different angles depending on where it hits the lens
    -combining these discoveries helped the quality of image
  • Louis Pasteur

    Louis Pasteur
    -created the swan neck flask
    -concluded microorganisms do not appear from spontaneous generation. microorganisms are introduced through particles in the air.
  • Stanley Miller and Harold Urey

    -studied how life originated
    -created a simulation using materials that represented early earths atmosphere
    -established that the hypothetical process could produce some building blocks of life without requiring life to synthesize them first
  • Lynn Margulis

    -studied how life evolved from the very basic beginnings to multicellular life
    -observed endosymbiosis and concluded that is is the best explanation for the evolution of the eukaryotic cell
    -endosymbiosis generated mitochondria then later brought chloroplast into some eukaryotic cells
  • Dino-lite

    Dino-lite
    -dino lite is a hand held microscope, slightly larger than a pen
    -they have a magnification up to 500x