Jan Swammerdam
Videos
Jan Swammerdam was a Dutch biologist and microscopist. His work on insects demonstrated that the various phases during the life of an insect—egg, larva, pupa, and adult—are different forms of the same
A 19th-century fantasy portrait, based on the face of Hartman Hartmanzoon from Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (no genuine portrait is known)
Oudeschans, drawing by Jan de Beijer
Illustration of a mosquito from Historia
Bybel der Natuure, 1693
Spontaneous generation
Videos
Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from non-living matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular. It was hypothesized th
Jan Swammerdam
…the hospital. At university Swammerdam engaged deeply in the religious and philosophical ideas of his time. He categorically opposed the ideas behind spontaneous generation, which held that God had created some creatures, but not insects. Swammerdam argued that this would blasphemously imply that parts of the universe were…
The goose barnacle
The barnacle goose
Claude Duret's 1605 Histoire admirable des plantes et herbes esmerueillables et miraculeuses en nature... illustrated numerous supposed examples of spontaneous generation, such as this tree generating both fishes and birds
Louis Pasteur's 1859 experiment showed that a boiled nutrient broth did not give rise spontaneously to new life, but that if direct access to air was permitted, the broth decomposed, implying that small organisms (in modern terms, microbial spores) had fallen in and started to grow in the broth.