Nafis is considered the Father of Circulatory Physiology. He wrote many books on medicine, but the most significant was Sharah Tashreeh al Qanoon (Commentary on anatomy of the Canon of Avicenna). It has the first descriptions of pulmonary circulation.
Giliani was the first woman recorded in history of having been an anatomist. She worked as a surgical assistant to Mondino de’ Liuzzi. When conducting her own dissections, she was said to have created a method of replacing the blood in corpses with a hardening colored dye, which possibly lead to a better understanding of the coronary-pulmonary circulatory system. Unfortunately, all evidence of her work was either lost or destroyed.
Done by Mondino de Luzzi, an Italian physician, in the presence of medical students and other spectators. At this time, certain European countries began allowing dissections for educational purposes. The body was that of an executed female criminal.
Leonardo da Vinci began a series of anatomical drawings. His accuracy and details were superior to anything previously attempted. Over the span of 25 years he dissected about 30 bodies. This ended around 1515 after pope Leo X told him to stop.
Versalius is one of the first scientist to write and publish a textbook on the subject of human anatomy. He did so by performing dissections on his own body, though it was against his tradition of relying on Galen, a Greek physician who Versalius worked closely with. Andreas Versalius’ work contributed greatly not only to the world of physiology, but also biology. He made it possible for scientists to have a deeper understanding of the biological make up of human beings. Reference: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Andreas-Vesalius
Leonheart Fuchs publishes Historia Stropium naming roughly 500 plant species. It was based upon his first-hand observation. It took over 30 years to finish, his sketches of the plants were infinitely better than those who had come before him.
The heliocentric model states that the Sun is the center of the universe. It actually replaced geocentrism, and while the heliocentric model existed for centuries throughout the world, it did not gain popularity until the 16th century due to the new technology. Nicholas Copernicus upon the theory that Atistarchus had already developed. Today, the heliocentric model is often times referred to the Copernicus model. Reference: http://www.universetoday.com/33113/heliocentric-model/
Girolamo Fracastoro presents first theory that diseases are contagious in De Contagione et Contagnosis Morbis (On contagion and contagious diseases). Described them as tiny spores that could be transferred by direct or indirect contact and could spread over long distances
Gabriel Fallopius does research on nervous and reproductive systems. Discovered the tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus, aka the fallopian tubes. Also named the vagina, placenta, and the clitoris.
Ambroise Paré details his technique of using ligatures to prevent hemorrhaging (the escape if blook from a ruptured blood vessel) during amputation in his book, Treatise on Surgery. He also documented the pain experienced by amputees with ‘phantom limbs’.
oAndrea Casalpino publishes De plantis libri XVI, classifying plants according to their fruits and flowers instead of alphabetically or by their medicinal properties. He helped establish botany as an independent science. Also discovered that heart is at the center of blood circulation, although he didn’t completely find out how circulation worked.
Zacgarias Janssen, Dutch spectacle-maker, is credited with creating the first Compound microscope. Magnification was said to be 3x when closed and 9x when extended. Images were still a bit blurry.
He is commonly known as the “father of electricity and magnetism” due to his great contributions to the beginning of the understanding of Earth’s magnetic field. Not only was he appointed to Queen Elizabeth I as the court physician, he also published a book titled De Magnete. The volume presented extensive research conducted by Gilbert regarding electricity and magnetism, as well as his belief that Earth is not the center of the universe, but rather exists on a magnetic planet that includes polarity corresponding to the north and south. Reference: http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/william-gilbert/
William Harvey developed the idea of blood circulation. Harvey claimed that the flow of blood must be continuous and in one direction. While some scientists believed the liver was the center of circulation for the body, Harvey explained his theory that the lungs were the center of circulation for the body. He explained that the lungs is where the transformation of venous blood to arterial blood took place. It took several years after he released his discovery for it to be acknowledged and published by Frankfurt. Reference: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/a-history-of-medicine/william-harvey/
Robert Hooke is a well-known scientist who worked with several different areas of science, as they were all of his interest. He is primarily and most well-known for his application of the word “cell” as the basic unit of life. Hooke published his book title Micrographia in September of 1665. Specifically, Hooke is accredited to the discovery of plant cells. Reference: http://www.history-of-the-microscope.org/robert-hooke-microscope-history-micrographia.php
Francesco Redi performed an experiment that tested the theory of spontaneous generation by releasing the results of his experiments when leaving a piece of meat alone to rot. Redi discovered that the maggots that seemed to be forming out of the rotting meat, were in fact hatching from tiny eggs laid by flies. Although Redi discovered this, he still believed that spontaneous generation applied to gall flies and intestinal worms. Reference: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Francesco-Redi
Variolation derived from the original medical practice to fight small pox called inoculation. Inoculation and variolation alike, were performed by taking a graft of a patient with the target disease and placing it on the skin of an individual without the disease. The only problem with this form of vaccination is that while the target disease such as small pox was vaccinated against, other disease were transferred as well. Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
In 1735, Carl Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae, which described a system of naming living organisms. This work became the foundation of our system of Taxonomy, including the use of a binomial nomenclature (Genus species) in the naming of organisms. Today, our classification scheme relies on genetic similarities between organisms, rather than the morphological characteristics Linnaeus used. Reference: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html
While there were many scientists that did believe that fossils found were those that belonged to animals that no longer existed, some scientists believed that fossils were simply the remains of living species. Georges Cuvier stated that fossils were the remains of animals that no longer existed. He proved the existence of extinction by comparing fossils of African and Indian elephants. While the fossils looked similar, there were distinct physical differences between the two. Cuvier went on to prove that the Earth undergoes periodic revolutions or “catastrophes”, which wipes out a number of species, but leaves their remains as fossils. Reference: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/cuvier.html
Dr. Edward Jenner issued a pamphlet in 1801 that would lead to the total immunity against small pox. He worked for years before he was able to release a form of vaccination described as “arm to arm transfer”, which was actually used until the late 1800’s. Some would even say that Edward Jenner is the “Father of the end of Plagues”. Reference: http://www.jennermuseum.com/his-legacy.html
In 1800, German explorer and scientist, Humboldt mapped over 1700 miles of South America’s Orinco River where he discovered the distribution of plant groups could be correlated with changed in temperature and rainfall, discovering the bases for the developments in plant ecology. While there, he made significant studies of the botany, zoology, geography, and climate of the region. He was most likely the first European to recognize the rich diversity of the tropical flora. Reference: http://www.biologyreference.com/Ve-Z/von-Humboldt-Alexander.html
Thanks to improvements in microscopes many scientists were able to identify and describe many different cell types and structures, including the discovery of the nucleus. However, it was not until 1838, that cells were associated with being universal units for all living things. Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8577831
Louis Pasteur’s experiment was said to be the one to have settled the question of spontaneous generation. By sterilizing a food source and keeping it isolated from the outside, Pasteur observed no decomposition of the food source. Upon exposure to the outside environment, Pasteur observed the decay of the food source. This strongly suggested the components need to create life do not spontaneously arise. Reference: https://www.boundless.com/microbiology/textbooks/boundless-microbiology-textbook/introduction-to-microbiology-1/introduction-to-microbiology-18/pasteur-and-spontaneous-generation-205-5188/
Morgan had become interested in species variation, and in 1911, he established the "Fly Room" at Columbia to determine how a species changed over time.Morgan and his students developed the ideas, and provided the proof for the chromosomal theory of heredity, genetic linkage, chromosomal crossing over and non-disjunction. In 1933, Thomas Hunt Morgan received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work in establishing the chromosomal theory of inheritance.
Also called the "Synthetic Theory of Evolution", In the 1930s and '40s evolutionists worked to incorporate new data from various subdisciplines of biology into a revised version of classical Darwinism. The primary focus on natural selection was maintained, but other aspects of Darwin's thinking were updated.
The discovery in 1953 of the double helix, the twisted-ladder structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), by James Watson and Francis Crick marked a milestone in the history of science and gave rise to modern molecular biology, which is largely concerned with understanding how genes control the chemical processes within cells. In short order, their discovery yielded ground-breaking insights into the genetic code and protein synthesis.
DNA to RNA to Protein: This is the Central Dogma, a term coined by Francis Crick in 1958. Since the discovery of the helical structure of DNA, scientists began to elucidate the value of that structure. The double helix provided both a template and storage mechanism. Mechanisms of transcription and translation take the information encoded in the DNA helix and make it "work" in cells, through the production of proteins defined by nucleic acid coding regions. Today, we know that the Central Dogma is much more complex.
In September 1990, William French Anderson, MD, posed with 4-year-old Ashi DeSilva at the NIH clinical center. Days earlier, she’d become the first recipient of gene therapy, a biotechnology that Dr. Anderson and others had been thinking about since Watson and Crick published the structure of DNA in 1953. 14 years late he was arrested for allegedly touching the daughter of a co-worker inappropriately during medical examines.
Dolly the sheep, as the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, is by far the world's most famous clone. This was a major scientific achievement as it demonstrated that the DNA from adult cells, despite having specialised as one particular type of cell, can be used to create an entire organism.
The 21st century’s first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three brain scientists whose work began in the 1950s, when the still-recent discovery of things such as the newly named “action potentials,” “sodium ion channels,” and “neurotransmitters” was providing scientists with a new model of the brain.
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