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1750 BCE
Date palm.
The Babylonians, who first discovered the date palm has separate genders, were the first to record sexual reproduction amongst plants. -
600 BCE
Galen.
A Greek physician who practiced in Rome during the middle of the 2nd century CE. His early years were spent as a surgeon at the gladiatorial arena, which gave him the opportunity to observe details of human anatomy. At that time in Rome, it was considered improper to dissect human bodies. Thus, though Galen’s research on animals was thorough, his knowledge of human anatomy was faulty. Because his work was extensive and clearly written, nevertheless, dominated medicine for centuries. -
500 BCE
Alcmaeon.
Considered to be the founder of embryology as a result of his studies, he investigated animal structure and described the difference between arteries, veins, discovered the optical nerve, and recognized the brain as the seat of intellect. -
500 BCE
Theophrastus.
In his great work, "The Calendar of Flora, 1761", in which the morphology, natural history, and therapeutic use of plants are described, Theophrastus distinguished between the external parts, which he called organs, and the internal parts, which he called tissues. This was an important achievement because Greek scientists of that period had no established scientific terminology for specific structures. -
400 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle, the first to classify all animal species and the first to show an understanding of an overall systematic taxonomy and to recognize units of different degrees within the system. -
350 BCE
Hippocrates.
Considered the “father of western medicine”, he is the first person to attribute diseases to natural causes rather than caused by the superstition that it is caused by gods. More importantly was his professional approach and discipline in the practice of medicine during his time, which has been carried over to this day. -
1500
Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo's anatomical studies of the human form during the Renaissance were so far advanced of the age that they included details not recognized until a century later. While dissecting animals and examining their structure, he compared them with humans. In doing so he was the first to indicate the homology between the bones and joints in the leg of the human and of the horse. Homology was to become an significant concept, a factor that is of great importance in the study of evolution. -
Anton van Leeuwenhoek
Anton van Leeuwenhoek is well known for his contributions to microscopy and how he applied this to the field of biology. He revolutionized a technique for creating powerful lenses, which some speculate were able to magnify up to 500 times. Leeuwenhoek used the microscopes to find out more about the living world – his discoveries include bacteria, the vacuole of the cell and the banded pattern of muscle fibers. -
Carl Linnaeus.
A botanist, physician and zoologist, Carl Linnaeus came up with the system of naming, ranking and classifying organisms we still use today. It was his vast collection of specimens of plants, animals and shells that led him to think up a way of grouping and naming species. He separated all living things into three kingdoms – animals, plants and minerals – subdivided them into classes, then into orders and finally into genera and species. -
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier was a French biologist and chemist born in 1743 in Paris. He is credited with the naming of hydrogen, oxygen, and silicon. This has led him to be considered the father of modern chemistry. As a biologist, Lavoisier identified that living things generated heat, leading to the concept of metabolism. -
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley’s contribution to the world of science includes his identification of oxygen in its gaseous state. His other work includes the invention of soda water and discovery of other “gases.” Of course, his most famous discovery of “dephogisticated air”, or oxygen, remains his most famous discovery. -
Edward Jenner.
Edward Jenner is considered as the “father of immunology” mainly because of his pioneering work on the smallpox vaccine and the use of vaccination. Born in Berkeley, England in 1749, he specialized in microbiology at the University of St. Andrews and the University of London. -
Robert Brown.
Specializing in botany, Scottish born Robert Brown introduced the model that help describe random movements of cells which is known as particle theory, or more aptly, Brownian motion. Among his contributions to the world of science was his description in detail of the cell nucleus in all living things. -
Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard has been considered “one of the greatest of all men of science.” He fostered the use of blind experiments in order to produce objective results. He also believed that vivisection, the use of surgery on a living thing for knowledge, was useful in the study and practice of medicine. -
Charles Darwin.
Probably the most famous naturalist of all time, Charles Darwin's contribution to biology and society is immense. He established that all species of life descended over time from common ancestors, with species continuing to exist through the process of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection combined with Mendelian genetics is now accepted as the modern evolutionary synthesis and forms the foundations of much biological scientific endeavor. -
Gregor Mendel.
Gregor Mendel's extraordinary contribution didn't get the recognition it deserved until long after the friar's death. He used peas to discover and demonstrate the laws of genetic inheritance, coining the terms ‘dominant’ and ‘recessive’ genes in the process. The laws were rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century and provided the mechanism for Darwin's theory of natural selection to occur. The two theories combine to form our current understanding of the evolutionary process. -
Louis Pasteur.
As one of the founders of medical microbiology, Louis Pasteur’s education in the field of chemistry and microbiology may be credited with his success. His germ theory of disease became the catalyst to his process we know as pasteurization. -
Wilhelm Johannsen.
Wilhelm was a pharmacist, botanist, plant physiologist, and geneticist. Best known for coining the terms gene, phenotype and genotype, and for his experiments in genetics. He studied the metabolism of dormancy and germination in seeds, tubers and buds. He showed that dormancy could be broken by various anesthetic compounds, such as ether and chloroform. He also shown that in populations homozygous for all traits, without genetic variation, seed size followed a normal distribution. -
Watson and Crick.
James Watson and Francis Crick shot to fame in 1962 for their discovery of the structure of DNA, winning the medical Nobel Prize in the process. Their model of DNA (double helix) explains how DNA replicates, and hereditary info is coded and passed on. The discovery of structure has led to a much more developed understanding of function – used in disease diagnosis and treatment, forensics and more. -
Barbara McClintock.
American geneticist Barbara McClintock spent her career analyzing maize, where she developed a technique for identifying and examining chromosomes individually. Despite it not being immediately recognized, her work made it possible for us to map human genomes. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for her discovery of transposition and how genes could turn their physical characteristics on and off. -
Wilmut and Campbell.
Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell cloned a mammal, famously named Dolly the Sheep. The pair cloned Dolly using a single adult sheep cell and a process of nuclear transfer. Dolly died after six years but cloning continues, although still not perfected and certainly not ready for human application (yet).
