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385 BCE
Aristotle
He was the first person to give a definition for nature.
Is an inner principle of change and being at rest, this means that when an entity moves or is at rest according to its nature reference to its nature may serve as an explanation of the event. -
Jan 22, 1561
Francis Bacon
He established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, he demand for an empirical, inductive approach known as the scientific method, which is the foundation of modern scientific inquiry. -
René Descartes
He was the first person to abandon scholastic aristotelianism, he promoted the development of a new science based in observation and experiment, he has been called the father of modern philosophy. He dismissed apparent knowledge as result of authority, the senses, and reason and erected new epistemic foundations on the basis of the intuition that, when he is thinking, he exists. -
Carolus Linnaeus
He created a uniform system for naming natural genera and species of organisms, known as binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Early proponent of the idea that biological evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws.
Believed that living things evolved in a continuously upward direction, from dead matter, through simple to more complex forms, toward human "perfection." Species didn't die out in extinctions, Lamarck claimed.
He cited examples of blindness in moles, the presence of teeth in mammals and the absence of teeth in birds as evidence of this principle. -
Alexander von Humboldt
He was a German naturalist and explorer who was a major figure in the classical period of physical geography and biogeography.
He is considered the father of geography. He wrote over 30 books with Cuba and Mexico geography.
Described many geographical features and species of life. -
Ernst Haeckel
The word ecology was coined by him.
Applied the term oekologie to the “relation of the animal both to its organic as well as its inorganic environment.” -
Henry Chandler Cowles
Influenced the early study of plant communities, particularly the process of plant succession, which later became a fundamental tenet of modern ecology. -
Arthur George Tansley
He was an English botanist and pioneer in ecology.
Introduced the concept of the ecosystem into biology. -
Eugene Pleasants Odum
He is considered "the father of modern ecology", brought the word ecosystem into common parlance by making it the organizing concept in his 1953 Fundamentals of Ecology. He make huge apportations to ecology, ecosystems and environmentalism.
