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4004 BCE
Divine creation began
according to Archbishop James Ussher, at 12:00 pm -
Period: 371 BCE to 287 BCE
Theophrastus
one of the most famous botanists in the ancient world; student of aristotle. Described around 500-600 plants. His works survived and were consulted for around 1500 years; influenced Renaissance scientists -
Period: 40 to 90
Dioscorides
One of the most famous botanists in the ancient world; a green physician attached to the Roman army in the 1st century AD. Described around 500-600 plants. Works survived and Consulted for 1500 years. Influenced renaissance scientists -
Period: 1490 to 1556
Luca Ghini
Invented the Herbarium; a library of dried and pressed plants. -
Period: 1501 to
16nth century; botany
Botanists of the 16nth century described approximately 500 plants unknown to the greeks, both medical and non-medicinal -
Period: 1581 to
James Ussher
Archbishop of Armagh, published a chronology of human history, including events in the bible -
Period: to
Francesco Redi
Italian physician, naturalist, biologist and poet. He is referred to as the "founder of experimental biology", and as the "father of modern parasitology". He was the first person to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies -
Period: to
Robert Hooke
English scientist, architect, and polymath, who, using a microscope, was the first to visualize a micro-organism. A Genesis skeptic; believed in extinction -
Period: to
Nicolas Steno
Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years; wrestled with the “solids within solids problem” with reference to “tongue stones” -
Period: to
Ussher's chronology of human history - published
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Period: to
Benoit de Maillet
French natural historian and diplomat; Wrote the Telliamed. -
Period: to
William Whiston
English theologian, historian, and mathematician, a leading figure in the popularisation of the ideas of Isaac Newton; wrote New Theory of the Earth -
New Theory of the Earth - Published
written by William Whiston; tries to explain biblical events by means of cometary events -
Period: to
Neptunism
18nth century; Neptunism was an attempt to understand geological formations (especially mountains) as a consequence of the recession of the oceans and the precipitation of minerals from the receding oceans. Most neptunists though, made no reference to the Bible or the Great flood. -
Period: to
George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
He published 36 volumes of his work Natural History
Another 8 volumes were published after his death. Also published the Epochs of Nature.
Was the director of the royal botanical garden, which he turned into the greatest natural history museum in the world -
Period: to
Carl Linnaeus
nonreligious doctor and naturalist; inspired the cataloguing of biodiversity, and First to use binomial nomenclature consistently -
Period: to
James Hutton
Scottish geologist, agriculturalist, chemical manufacturer, naturalist and physician. Often referred to as the ‘father’ of modern geology, he played a key role in establishing geology as a modern science. Founded plutonism with his book "Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations" -
Period: to
Erasmus Darwin
Renaissance man, grandfather of Charles Darwin. Wrote "Zoonomia" (1796), Set forth a theory of evolution similar to Lamarck. -
Period: to
William Paley
William Paley was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God. Wrote Natural Theology (1802) -
Period: to
Lamarck
Botanist and Zoologist; invented the term biology and biological keys. His evolutionary ideas were developed in 3 books; Zoological Philosophy, Natural History of Invertabrrates and Analystical system of Positive Knowledge about Man. Believed in acquired characteristics. -
Telliamed - published
book by Benoit de Maillet - published ten years after he died. describes his conversations with a mysterious philosopher from the East with ideas such as; The Earth has seen eternal cycles of creation and destruction, Oceans once covered the earth, The origin and evolution of life -
Publishing of Natural History by Buffon
36 large volumes, 8 more after Buffon's death -
The Epochs of Nature published
by Buffon, proposed 7 periods in the history of life -
Biological keys invented
invented by Lamarck -
Period: to
Patrick Matthew
Well travelled and well read scottish landowner; wrote On Naval Timber and Arboriculture (1831) which mentions and describes natural selection and common descent -
Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations - published
Written By James Hutton; founded plutonism. Argued for uniformitarianism and geological cycles and a steady state earth. -
Period: to
Plutonism (late 18nth century)
Emphasized internal heat as an agent of geological change; founded by James Hutton with his book Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations (1794) -
Zoonomia - Published
Written by Erasmus Darwin - set forth a theory of evolution similar to Lamarc -
Period: to
Charles Lyell
Scottish geologist; wrote Principles of Geology 3 volumes (1830 - 1833) -
Period: to
Assembling the first stratigraphical column accomplished
Done by Georges Cuvier and William Smith. Key idea; fossils are not just a jumble, they tell a chronological story and therefore they can be used to determine relative dates of geological strata. -
Biology becomes a science
Cell theory, Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics have biology great explanatory power. If a field of study requires successful, general theories to be considered a science (as some define ‘science’) then biology became a science in the 19nth century -
Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth - published
condensed version of James Hutton's book Theory of the Earth with Proofs and illustrations (1795); condensed and rewritten for broader audience by John Playfair -
Natural Theology - published
written by William Paley -
Period: to
Robert Chambers
anonymously published the book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) -
Period: to
Richard Owen
Naturalist, Biologist, Professor, Christian. Helped Darwin interpret fossils that Darwin had brought over after the adventures on the Beagle; more info in reading "the Professor and the Naturalist" -
Period: to
Matthias Schleiden
Wrote the paper "Phytogenesis" (about plants) - believed that the nucleus arises de novo from granules and a structureless fluid (the cytoblastema) in plants. He thought that the new nucleus then builds the rest of the cell and the cell wall, then disappears. He observer that some cells seem to arise within pre-existing cells
Thought they were not visible -
Zoological Philosophy - published
Written by Lamarck; part of his evolutionary ideas -
Period: to
Charles Darwin
Naturalist; made a convincing case for the reality of evolutionary change, specifically about Natural selection. It was not the first case, but it was the first case to be widely accepted among biologists. Wrote "Origin of Species." -
Period: to
Theodor Schwann
extended cell theory to animals in 1839.
Schwann also believed that fermentation granules (yeast) are cells, a bold suggestion because yeast present no internal structure through a light microscope -
Natural History of Invertebrates - Published
Written by Lamarck -
Analytical System of Positive knowledge about Man
written by Lamarck -
Period: to
Rudolph Virchow
concluded that cells come only from preexisting cells (1854), not from a formless precursor substance: “Omnis cellula e cellula”. He also studied cellular pathology (e.g tumours, healing of injured tissues) replacing Hippocrates’ humoural pathology with this concept (1858). He also opposed darwinism and social darwinism; argued against the concept of ‘superior race (aryans)’ in germany -
Period: to
Louis Pasteur
French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization. He ESTABLISHED biogenesis (life to life principle) in the mid 1860's -
Period: to
Sir Francis Galton
asshole - I mean pioneered the biometrical approach and was also the founder of eugenics, proponment of scientific racism. Also created the Galton's Law of Ancestral Heredity. horrible man. ew. Also was Darwin's cousin. -
Period: to
Gregor Mendel
Abbott and scientist; Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. -
Period: to
Alfred Russel Wallace
British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858 -
Period: to
Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast; Disagreed with Darwin, stating; The Earth has not been habitable by life for a long enough time for Darwinian evolution to have occurred. The Sun does not have enough energy reserves to have existed for very long. -
Period: to
Principles of Geology; 3 volumes published
Written by Charles Lyell; defended Hutton and uniformitarianism. Was the 19nth century's most important textbook of geology -
Naval Timber and Arboriculture
Written by Patrick Matthew: in its appendix it describes natural selection and common descent; 28 years before the publication of The Origin of Species -
Period: to
The Beagle Journey
The ship that Darwin went on that traveled around the coasts of south America; Leaving darwin to explore and think about evolution. -
Period: to
Fleeming Jenkin
a professor; claimed that Darwinism evolution is inconsistent with what is known about heredity and the nature of species -
Period: to
A.W Bennett
British Botanist; disagreed with Darwin stating that Natural Selection cannot fashion complicated adaptations requiring many steps, because each step would have to be both small but adaptive -
Period: to
August Weissman
German evolutionary biologist; created the Germplasm theory. -
Darwin began a notebook on species transmutation
The observations and material he had gathered on his voyage convinced him that evolution occurs. -
Phytogenesis - published
a paper written by Matthias Schleiden - formulated cell theory in plants -
The Voyage of the Beagle - published
written by Darwin, accounting for his journey on the Beagle. -
Cell theory extends to animals
done by Theodor Schwann -
Structure and Distribution of Coral reefs
written by Charles Darwin after the Beagle journey -
The Sketch
done by darwin; he wrote out his own evolutionary ideas in a manuscript, which was not published in his lifetime. -
Period: to
Peter Kropotkin
Russian Anarchist Naturalist; Wrote Mutual Aid; A factor in Evolution -
Expanded version of The Sketch
by Darwin; equivalent to 160 printed pages; not published either -
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation - published
written ten years after author's death; Rober Chambers. book argues that the evolution of life occurs, and that this is part of a general Law of Development of the Universe -
Period: to
Friedrich Miescher
discovered DNA by isolating a nuclei from pus and found a new kind of molecule; called in nuclein -
Period: to
Hugo de Vries
Dutch Botanist. independently derived all of Mendel’s observations and explanatory model - hereditary stuff -
Period: to
Oscar Hertwig
Oscar Hertwig was a German embryologist and zoologist known for his research in developmental biology and evolution. Hertwig is credited as the first man to observe sexual reproduction by looking at the cells of sea urchins under the microscope (1876) -
Period: to
Albrecht Kossel
found five kind of bases in nucleic acids -
Darwin returned to evolutionary work
after an 8 year period of work on barnacles. -
Rudolph Virchow concludes that cells come only from preexisting cells
not from a formless precursor substance: “Omnis cellula e cellula” -
Darwin starts writing "Natural Selection"
Darwin began writing a 1000-page book he intended to call Natural Selection, encouraged by Lyell and Hooker, who had warned him he might be scooped. -
Alfred Russel Wallace write to Darwin
English Naturalist living in Indonesia, wrote a brief outline of evolution by natural selection and sent it to Darwin for his opinion, unaware that Darwin had been working on the same issue; this incites Darwin to be more public about his work. -
Darwin arranged for three papers to be read to a meeting of the Linnaean Society
1.Five page summary of Darwin’s ideas, written by Darwin for this occasion
2. Copy of Darwin’s letter to Asa Gray from 1857 to show he had not stolen Wallace’s ideas
3. Wallace’s paper, “On the Tendency of varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type”, 12 pages -
The Origin of Species - published
written by Darwin in 15 months during period of bad health. A lot of the book is devoted to artificial and natural selection, and the rest showed how common descent explains morphological similarities in systematic groupings, embryological similarities, rudimentary and vestigial organs, the geographic distribution of organisms, and fossil sequences in the stratigraphical column. -
Period: to
William Bateson
English biologist and Apostle; was a lifelong defender of Mendel's approach to the study of heredity. -
Period: to
Willhelm Weinburg
German physician -
Period: to
Theodor Heinrich Boveri
Theodor Heinrich Boveri was a German zoologist, comparative anatomist and co-founder of modern cytology. Evidence that chromosomes contain hereditary factors dates from the work of Theodor Boveri in the 1880’s. He proposed that continuity of chromosomes from cell generation to cell generation, and their individuality, in contrast to Weismann’s speculations about chromosomes as passive to gene bins.
Also thought that cancer could start from one chromosome damage -
Period: to
Carl Correns
who had been a student of Karl Nageli’s in the 1880’s.
Encouraged Mendel to study Hawkweeds
Correns studied paired traits in peas (Mendel’s plant) and in maize. On April 21, 1900, he read de Vries paper, which did not credit Mendel. Because Corren disliked de Vries, he promoted Mendel’s priority and forced de Vries to mention Mendel in a later paper. -
establishment of Biogenesis
Mid-1860's; establishment of the life to life principle Biogenesis by Louis Paster - although the idea had been around long before Pasteur. -
Period: to
Thomas Hunt Morgan
American biologist; a critic of Mendelism/Mendel's work. Had one of the most productive labs in the 20th century -
Period: to
Pheobus Aaron Levene
Elucidated the structure of nucleotides and the difference between DNA and RNAl propose the tetranucleotide model of DNA -
Period: to
Meiosis first observed
Meiosis is reductional division of the chromosomes, and is a necessary part of all sexual life cycles -
Period: to
Erik Von Tshermak
Austrian agronomist who developed several new disease-resistant crops, including wheat-rye and oat hybrids.He bred peas. Using yellow/green cotyledons and round/wrinkled seeds (two of the pairs of traits Mendel had studied) and derived the same 3:1 F2 ratio. He also did the same backcrosses as Mendel had done and got the same results. He liked Mendel. -
first man to observe sexual reproduction by looking at the cells of sea urchins under the microscope
Oscar Hertwig (1876): in sea urchin, fertilization involves the penetration of an egg by a sperm cell. After the fusion of the gametes, the fertilized egg is one cell. After the fusion of the gametes, the fertilized egg is one cell with two nuclei, one from each gamete. The nuclei fuse, and the new nucleus divides when the fertilized egg divides. -
Period: to
Walter Sutton
American geneticist and physician whose most significant contribution to present-day biology was his theory that the Mendelian laws of inheritance could be applied to chromosomes at the cellular level of living organisms. This is now known as the Boveri-Sutton chromosome theory -
Period: to
GH Hardy
english mathematician -
Period: to
Richard Goldschmidt
German-born American geneticist. He is considered the first to attempt to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. -
Mendel Published his pea hybridization findings
In the late 1850’s and early 1860’s he performed his pea hybridization experiments, which required the gathering of immense amounts of data. He published his results in 1866, but his scientific work soon ended because of several setbacks -
de Vries concluded that the hereditary units were ‘intracellular pangenes’
de Vries concluded that the hereditary units were ‘intracellular pangenes’. Probably on the chromosomes. -
de Vries discovered Mendel's paper
By 1900 de Vries had observed the same segregation behaviour in 15 plant species. In December of 1899 as he was preparing his work for publication, he discovered Mendel’s paper, but he not mention Mendel in his own paper. -
“Darwinism is dead”
Darwinism here refers to natural selection -
Period: to
Eugenics was popular
it was of great interst to many geneticists and social commentators. GROSS -
William Bateson Reads Mendel's work for the first time
Bateson took a train ride form Cambridge to London to deliver a talk, and while on the train he read Mendel’s paper. He experienced an immediate conversion to Mendelism on the train, threw away his original talk, and delivered a lecture on Mendel’s work instead. -
Period: to
Mutation Theory - 3 volumes published
written by Hugo de Vries -
Mendel's Principles of Heredity; a Defense - Published
book written by William Bateson -
Walter Sutton observes that chromosomes in meiosis behave in the same way that Mendel’s hereditary determinants do.
Walter Sutton (1903) observed that chromosomes in meiosis behave in the same way that Mendel’s hereditary determinants do. But there must be more genes than chromosomes
And if genes are on chromosomes, some genes should segregate together and wind up in the same sex cells - something Mendel and the Medelists had never observed. -
Genetics
term created by William Bateson -
William Bateson discovered co-segregation of genes in breeding experiments with plants.
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Hardy and Weinberg - Mendelian genetics
Hardy and Weinberg (1908) took a populational approach to Mendelian genetics, asking how frequencies of Mendelian factors increase or decrease in a population over generational time. -
Morgan starts breeding Drosophila fruit flies
Morgan started breeding Drosophila fruit flies in his small space at Columbia University. -
Gene
term created by Willheim Johannsen (Danish Botanist) -
Genotype, phenotype
Terms created by Willheim Johannsen -
Period: to
The Modern synthesis
It demonstrated that the principles of the new genetics were sufficient to account for Darwinian evolution and showed that selection need not be intense to be important; also enlarged the set of causes of evolution, and argued that there was no barrier between microevolution and macroevolution