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Between 384 and 322 BC, Aristotle believed he had evidence for the occurrence of spontaneous generation
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Between 1579 and 1644, Johannes Baptista von Helmont reported spontaneous generation of mice. He believed that mice came when a flask of wheat and old rags was incubated in a warm, dark closet
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Francesco Redi, an Italian scientist, proposed a different hypothesis: that maggots came from eggs hat flies laid on the meat
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Before 1668, people believed in spontaneous generation.
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John Needham, an advocate for spontaneous generation, conducted a series of experiments with boiled broths
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Another Italian scientist, Lazzaro Spallanzani, would lay forth a crucial experiment, a modification of Needham’s experiment
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Pasteur disproved the hypothesis of spontaneous generation through an experiment
