Spontaneous generation
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Spontaneous generation is a superseded scientific theory that held that living creatures could arise from non-living matter and that such processes were commonplace and regular.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
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.
Francesco Redi
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Francesco Redi was an 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 perso
Spontaneous generation
…generation was taken as scientific fact for two millennia. Though challenged in the 17th and 18th centuries by the experiments of the Italian biologists Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani, it was not discredited until the work of the French chemist Louis Pasteur and the Irish physicist John Tyndall in the mid-19th…
Portrait by Jacob Ferdinand Voet
Statue of Francesco Redi on the Uffizi Gallery (Piazzale degli Uffizi) in Florence. At his feet is a copy of Bacco in Toscana.
Portrait of Francesco Redi by Pietro Dandini
Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl'insetti frontcover