This timeline is a brief description of some important dates in the history of biology.
Jan Swammerdam observed red blood cells under a microscope. He was the first person ever to observe red blood cells under a microscope. This observation contributed to the methodology of biology. Many scientist today remember him as someone who attributed to the way that people can examine, preserve and dissect specimens. The methods he used is still used daily when it comes to the use of microscopes and the viewing of microscopic particles. http://www.annclinlabsci.org/content/33/2/237.full
Nehemiah Grew also known as the father of plant anatomy establishes plant physiology. In 1682, he released his great work called “The Anatomy of Plants”. This publication was divided into four different books. This anatomy is mainly known for the descriptions of the plant structure along with the descriptions of the difference between the stem and root of a plant. This publication was the first to include the first known microscopic image of pollen. This piece of work had a great contribution because it provided descriptive visuals of the plant anatomy.
Carl Linnaeus published Systema Naturae which is a small guidebook explaining his new system of the classification of nature and life. This pamphlet included a way to name and organize different species. He classification system is one that we still use today worldwide. The Binomial Nomenclature is a two part naming method that has assisted in the naming of many new species. There are many editions of these books because there were many discoveries being made
Joseph Priestley demonstrated that plants produce a gas that animals and flames consume, which is now known as carbon dioxide and oxygen. He completed this experiment by isolating some air and testing what was in the air particles. He discovered oxygen by trapping it in a enclosed area with a mice and saw that the mice was still able to live. He stated that this air was better than the common air because it served as a purpose for respiration and inflammation. This discovery is simply amazing because we breath oxygen everyday and Priestley gave us a term for this “dephlogisticated” air that we breath.
Baron Cuvier founds the science of comparative anatomy. Cuvier publish his first works which included an array of his course of lectures and his first statement of natural classification of the animal kingdom. Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of specimens, either the same or different ones. This has assisted great because it serves as an evidence that evolution was and is real. Scientist have used this form of science to prove that organisms share very similar ancestors.
Karl von Baer developed Embryology. He made this discovery by studying embryology in chickens, he watched the early stage of development in the chickens. As the embryonic plate formed, he believed that two parallel rollers developed from an existing framework. This process developed the term known as differentiation. This contribution assisted science a lot because it gives future biologist a template to work with when it comes to researching things that have to do with the animal life, it also shined a new light on the embryo.
Matthias Schleiden proposed that all plants are composed of cells. In this year, he wrote Contributions to Phytogenesis which stated that different parts of plants are all made up from cells. He was one of the first ever to recognize how important the cell nucleus was along with its functions with the plant organism. He also established that an embryonic plant organism develops from each individual cell. Today, we still use the same foundation when it comes to the anatomy of plants.
Theodor Schwann: Schwann published Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants, where he extended to animals the “Cell Theory” that had been developed the year before for plants by German botanist Matthias Jacob Schleiden. He argued that cells are the elementary particles of life. His arguments can be proven correct today because there is a lot of evidence that animals are composed of cells.
Rudolf Virchow discovered that organism do not get sick instead it is the cells or groups of cells that become infected. He also claimed that all cells stem from another cell. He stated that changes in normal cells lead to diseases, launching the field of cellular pathology. This approach shifted the theoretical medical practice to a microscopic approach.
Mendel first coined the terms “recessive” and “dominant” in reference to certain traits. Mendel demonstrated the actions of invisible “factors”—what we now call genes. As well as show how they provide for visible traits in predictable ways
Friedrich Miesche: Swiss doctor, Friedrich Miescher, isolated a new chemical substance from cells. The substance was a white precipitate he called "nuclein." Miescher correctly assumed that the precipitate was from the large nuclei of the white blood cells. Miescher had isolated the first crude extract of DNA.
Pasteur further developed the germ theory. He also provided evidence in the process of fermentation which showed living organisms live in the fermentation processes. It also showed that specific organisms were involved in particular fermentation processes. He then went on to discover putrefaction and pasteurization in order to get rid of the living organisms. He also contributed work to developing vaccines and in saving the silk industry
The process of meiosis was first discovered in sea urchins by biologist Oscar Hertwig. It was later introduced in the level of chromosomes by Edouard Van Beneden. The importance of meiosis in reproduction was discovered by August Weismann who suggested that in order for the number of chromosomes to be maintained two daughter cells were necessary to transform one diploid cell into four haploid cells. Geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan presented the first true genetic interpretation of meiosis as he observed the crossover of genetic material in genes of fruit flies
He published his works, Sex Limited Inheritance in Drosophila, after a series of experiments with fruit flies. Morgan showed the first true genetic interpretation of meiosis as he observed the crossover of genetic material in genes of fruit flies. His major findings included that genes resided on chromosomes, each gene is found on a specific chromosome and the trait for eye color must be on a sex chromosome.
Morgan inferred the process of what is now known as chromosome recombination from the understanding that chromosomes are adjoining collection of genes, and subsequently those traits (mutations in some of the genes) map to one particular chromosome which naturally tend to segregate together
James B. Sumner showed that Urease enzyme is a protein. Sumner began his research by isolating enzymes in the pure form which has never been attempted before. The enzyme he worked with was Urease. Many didn't believe that was he was doing was achievable, but he proved that urease could be isolated and crystallized. By breaking the enzyme down to it purest form, he had test to prove that it was a protein. The classification of this protein opened the gateway for more research to be done on the enzyme as a protein.
Alexander Fleming- By leaving out a pile of petri dishes Fleming accidentally discovered that the mold Penicillium notatum could kill bacteria. This discovery eventually lead to the creation of penicillin. Penicillin is still used today as an antibiotic to cure viruse
Tadeusz Reichstein along with his team were among the first few to synthesize vitamins for mass production. Reichstein began with trying to produce vitamin C, in which he used L- sorbose to artificially synthesize vitamin C.
Oswald and his team learned that pneumonia could transform into different types or strains, while working on a cure for pneumonia. This led them to begin identifying DNA as, the agents of change in living organisms.Transformations stopped taking place when all the DNA was removed from the bacteria. They discovered that DNA was responsible for the transforming principle
In 1946 Calvin began his Nobel prize-winning work on photosynthesis where he used carbon dioxide with trace amounts of radioactive Carbon-14 to Green Algae. He also stopped the alga’s growth at different stages and used paper chromatography to identify most of the chemical reactions in the intermediate steps of what is now known as photosynthesis
James Watson and Francis Crick first described the structure of DNA through the use of a model. It showed that each strand of the DNA molecule was a template for the other. During cell division the two strands separate and on each strand a new half is built, just like the one before. This way DNA can reproduce itself without changing its structure with the exception except for occasional errors, or mutations.
Lynn Margulis developed an endosymbiotic theory of eukaryotic cells that revolutionized the modern concept of how life came to be on Earth. Her theory consisted of symbiosis where two different organisms either help or don’t help each other. Her theory stated that eukaryotic cells evolved from the symbiotic merger of bacteria that had lived independently. This changed scientists fews on the early evolution of cells
Marianne Grunberg-Manago, Severo Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg- Grunberg-Manago along with Ochoa discovered the first nucleic-acid synthesizing enzyme. The enzyme was later identified as a polynucleotide phosphorylase which usually catalyzes the breakdown of RNA. Ochoa and Kornberg also won a nobel peace prize for the synthesis of RNA and DNA. Kornberg was also accredited with the discovery of DNA polymerase enzymes.
-Arthur Kornberg- was the first to isolated a new enzyme from E. coli, and called it “DNA polymerase” due to its ability to assemble nucleotides which creates strands of DNA. Kornberg used DNA polymerase to verify one of the biggest points of the Watson-Crick model of DNA structure which was DNA is always polymerized in the 5´ to 3´direction.
G.E. Hutchinson was responsible for the concept of a niche. He defined it as a volume enclosing the diversity of conditions in which an organism can reproduce. This niche states that the surrounding and resources of specimens affect their way of life. Hutchinson began the research because he wanted to know why a vast amount of animals were able to live in one habitat.
Robert Whittaker was the first to propose the five-kingdoms of life. He divided them into Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. Whitaker also proposed to classify biomes upon the two abiotic factors of temperature and precipitation
James Lovelock formulated the Gaia Hypothesis while doing work for NASA. The Gaia hypothesis proposed that living and nonliving parts of Earth form a complex interacting system that is thought of as an organism. The concept of the hypothesis entails that the Earth has a regulatory system on the environment that acts to sustain life.The hypothesis has been widely accepted in Environmentalist but not has not been accepted by many scientist.
A team including and lead by J. Craig Venter from the Institute for Genome Research managed to sequence a 1.8 Mb bacterium with computational methods developed at TIGR. Other projects lacked computational methods to put together the large amounts of random sequences produced from “shotgun” sequencing
Dolly the Sheep was the first animal to be cloned. The process included removing the nucleus of a body cell and inserting it into the egg cell. The process was done by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues.
Researchers in New York led by Eckard Wimmer developed a polio virus from inert chemicals. The chemicals were injected in mice and caused polio. The lab made virus was almost identical to the naturally occurring virus. The development of the virus raised many questions about who could also recreate or obtain the almost extinct deadly polio virus.
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