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John Ray publishes "The History of Plants"
Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of what a species is. he did so in his book "The History of Plants". -
Comte de Buffon
(1707-1788) One of his most significant contributions to the biological sciences was his insistence that natural phenomena must be explained by natural laws rather than theological doctrine. -
Charles Lyell
(1726-1797) Lyell provided conclusive evidence for the theory of uniformitarianism. -
Pierre Louis Maupertuis
Maupertuis wrote of natural modifications occurring during reproduction and accumulating over many generations to produce new species. -
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
(15 April 1772 – 19 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories. -
Carl Linnaeus
He was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. -
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel, through his work on pea plants, discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance.Mendel showed that the inheritance of these traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. The independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics. -
Alfred Russel Wallace
He sent an article outlining his theory of evolution due to natural selection to Darwin; it was published, along with a description of Darwin's own theory, in the same year. -
The Origin of Species is published
Charles Darwin's book "The Origin of Species" is published, -
Hugo de Vries publishes "Intracellular Pangenesis"
Hugo de Vries publishes "Intracellular Pangenesis" in which, based on a modified version of Charles Darwin's theory of Pangenesis of 1868, he postulated that different characters have different hereditary carriers. He specifically postulated that inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in particles. -
August Weismann
His main contribution was the germ plasm theory, according to which (in a multicellular organism) inheritance only takes place by means of the germ cells—the gametes such as egg cells and sperm cells. -
William Bateson
The biologist who founded and named the science of genetics and whose experiments provided evidence basic to the modern understanding of heredity. -
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan established the chromosomal theory of inheritance. As a young boy in Lexington, Kentucky, Morgan loved exploring the countryside collecting samples of wild life and fossils. At the State University of Kentucky, Morgan's course load was heavy in the natural sciences. -
G. Ledyard Stebbins
He was an American botanist and geneticist who is widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. -
The Discovery of DNA
The discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid, otherwise known as DNA, was made by Frederick Miescher, but the structure was discovered by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. -
The publication of the structure of DNA
The publication of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick demonstrated a physical basis for inheritance. -
Ernst Mayr
He was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist. -
Human Genome
Human Genome Sequenced
