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437 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle was born in Stagira in north Greece, the son of Nichomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. He was trained first in medicine, and then in 367 he was sent to Athens to study philosophy with Plato. Though a brilliant pupil, Aristotle opposed some of Plato's teachings, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the Academy. After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent some time traveling, and possibly studying biology, in Asia Minor. -
Carolus Linnaeus
Linnaeus continued to revise his Systema Naturae, which grew from a slim pamphlet to a multivolume work, as his concepts were modified and as more and more plant and animal specimens were sent to him from every corner of the globe. (The image at right shows his scientific description of the human species from the ninth edition of Systema Naturae. At the time he referred to humanity as Homo diurnis, or "man of the day". -
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is the somewhat improbable father of microbiology. A moderately educated owner of a textile business, he learned how to make his own unique microscopes which offered unparallelled magnification. Using these microscopes he made a number of crucially important scientific discoveries, including single-celled animals and plants, bacteria, and spermatozoa. -
Edward Jenner
Edward Jenner was a country doctor who had studied nature and his natural surroundings since childhood. He had always been fascinated by the rural old wives tale that milkmaids could not get smallpox. He believed that there was a connection between the fact that milkmaids only got a weak version of smallpox – the non-life threatening cowpox. but did not get smallpox itself. -
John Snow
was an English physician and a leader in the adoption of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854. -
Florence Nightingale
she and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, greatly reducing the death count. Her writings sparked worldwide health care reform, and in 1860 she established St. Thomas' Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. A revered hero of her time, she died on August 13, 1910, in London. -
Louis Pasteur
Pasteur showed that airborne microbes were the cause of disease. Pasteur built on the work of Edward Jenner and helped to develop more vaccines Pasteur’s career showed how conservative the medical establishment was at the time. -
Robert Koch
Koch was a doctor and he had a detailed knowledge of the human body – something that Pasteur, as a research scientist – lacked. He was also skilled in experiments, the result of his work in natural sciences. Qualities that also proved to be important were his ability to work for long periods of time and his patience. However, Koch was also difficult to work with and could not tolerate anyone telling him that his theories were wrong. -
Hans Ernst August Buchner
German bacteriologist who in the course of extensive immunological studies (1886–90) discovered a naturally occurring substance in the blood—now known as complement—that is capable of destroying bacteria. He also devised methods of studying anaerobic bacteria. -
Joseph Lister
Lister was born in 1827 and died in 1912. As Professor of Surgery at Glasgow University, he was very aware that many people survived the trauma of an operation but died afterwards of what was known as ‘ward fever’.