History of Biology by Candice Onukwue, Chelsea Clarke, and Deion Law

Biology Timeline

0550 BC

Alcmaeon of Croton

Alcmaeon was the first person to conduct human dissections. While dissecting human bodies, he discovered the optic nerve and also the Eustachian tubes. He was able to differentiate veins from arteries.

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0350 BC

Aristotle founds zoology

Aristotle wrote a number of tretises based on his study of Zoology including parts of animals, sleep and walking, dreams, plants and many more

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1489 - 1515

Leonardo's Anatomical Drawings

in 1489, Leonardo da Vinci published drawings of the human body. He had performed many dissections on corpses. He then drew drawings based on what he saw.

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1628

1628 William Harvey publishes "An anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals

William Harvey was a physician who dissected hundreds of animals from many species to study how blood moves through the body. He came up with the realization that the heart does not produce new blood, but recycles i.

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1651

William Harvey concludes that all animals, including mammals, develop from eggs.

William Harvey developed several theories about generations.In his observations, Harvey discovered the cicatricula, the area of the embryo that contains all the embryonic cells and from where generation proceeds.

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1663

Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke studeid thin slices of cork. He discovered plant cells (cell walls) in the cork. He also observed other plants and noticed the similar structures.

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1673

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek developed a method for creating powerful lenses. He then used it to study live cells on mold, bees, and lice. He's credited with the discovery of live cells.

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1682

Nehemiah Grew establishes plant physiology

Nehemiah Grew further developed Robert Hookes discovery of plant cells. He studied flowers, fruits, and seeds. He then observed and named the different parts of the plants.

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1694

Camerarius

German botanist Rudolph Camerarius established the different sexual orientation in plants. He did this by identifying and defining the male and female reproductive parts of the plant. He also went into depth their function in fertilization.

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1735

Carl Linnaeus

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.

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1745

Joseph Needham

Joseph Needham thought he observed spontaneous generation in hay infusion

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1749

Buffon

1.In 1749 Buffon published the first volume of Natural History – Georges- Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon was a French naturalist. His publication of the first volume of natural history is what he is most remembered for. Buffon was the first person in modern history to attempt to present knowledge of natural history, geology, and anthropology all in one book

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1772

Joseph Priestly noticed that plants release oxygen

Priestly was a brilliant and highly respected British scientist that is most famous for his discovery of oxygen. In a series of experiments, Priestly noted that “air is not an elementary substance, but a composition”. He methodically analyzed the properties of different “airs” using an inverted container on a raised platform that could capture gasses produced by different types of experiments. The container could be placed in a pool of water or mercury, sealing it tight, and a gas would be tested to see if it would sustain a flame or support life. In one experiment, Priestly noticed that if he put a green plant (in sunlight) in the same jar that a flame went out of with a mouse, that the mouse would live and not die as it would without the plant. From this observation he concluded that plants release oxygen (a process better known as photosynthesis).

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1786

Luigi Galvani discovers “animal electricity”

In the mid 1780’s an Italian physician by the name of Luigi Galvani, conducted an experiment using the nerves of a recently deceased frog and connecting them to a metal wire pointed to the sky during a thunderstorm. From this experiment he noticed that the muscle tissue will respond to the external electrical stimuli and that muscle and nerve cells in living organisms have an electrical force. The fundamentals of electrophysiology and neuroscience can be traced back to this experiment

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1795

In 1795 the British Navy uses limes to prevent scurvy

James Lind, a British Royal Navy ship surgeon noticed that in May of 1747, giving crew members two oranges and a lemon versus cider, vinegar, and etc with the soldiers’ and sailors’ rations, prevented Scurvy. However the British Navy didn’t start to provide lemons or limes until 1795 due to the conflicting evidence and because they viewed taking care of their crew members as a sign of weakness

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1796

In 1796 Edward Jenner produces the first smallpox vaccination

Edward Jenner a British natural scientist turned biologist and surgeon, used the link between contracting cowpox and being protected to smallpox and figured in order to be protected from smallpox, cowpox must be transmitted from one person to another as a means of protection. He used matter from an infected dairymaid who contracted cowpox, and then inoculated a young boy. Initially the young boy felt sick, but then after ten days he was feeling much better. After trying to inoculate the young boy two months later with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion, no disease developed, and Jenner founded immunology.

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1805

In 1805 Lorenz Oken suggested the primitive version of cell theory

A German naturalist and nature philosopher, Oken stated in his book “ Die Zeugung” that “all organic beings originate from and consist of vesicles or cells.

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1828

In 1828 Wöhler synthesized urea

While trying to prepare ammonium cyanate, he instead synthesized urea by evaporating the solution and not letting crystals form at room temperature.

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1845

the inhibitory action of a nerve was discovered by Eduard and Ernst Weber

Brothers well known for their contributions to science, Eduard and Ernst Weber discovered that electrical stimulation of some parts of the brain or of the peripheral end of the vagus nerve slows or even in some instances stop the heart. This was the first instance of nerve action being the cause of inhibition rather than exciting it.

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1858

Darwin and Wallace report their Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace publication of the Origin of Species. The evidence that came from this book came from geologists, paleontologists, embryologists, and other naturalists.

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1862

In 1862 the role of sunlight in photosynthesis was demonstrated by Julius Sachs

Julius Sachs was a German botanist who discovered that the influence of light intensity helps with the formation and storage of starch, and how it plays a role in plant growth and development

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1869

Friedrich Miescher identifies nucleic acid

In 1869, Friedrich Miescher isolated "nuclein," DNA with associated proteins, from cell nuclei. He determined that nuclein was made up of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus and there was a unique ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen. He was able to isolate nuclein from other cells and later used salmon sperm as a source. He was the first to identify DNA as a distinct molecule.

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1871

The Descent of Man

In 1871, Charles Darwin wrote a research essay concerning the evolution on mankind. He discusses the evidence for the descent of man from some lower form. Not only is man's whole structure comparable, bone by bone and muscle by muscle, with that of other vertebrata, but his close relation to them is shown in a variety of unexpected ways.

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1885

van Benedeu discovers meiosis

In this work, he discovered how chromosomes organized meiosis, the production of gametes. Van Beneden elucidated, together with Walther Flemming and Eduard Strasburger, the essential facts of mitosis, where, in contrast to meiosis, there is a qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells.

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1891

Henking discovers the "X-chromosome"

It got its name in 1891 from a baffled biologist named Hermann Henking. To investigate the nature of chromosomes, Henking examined cells under a simple microscope. All the chromosomes in the cells came in pairs. All except one. Henking labeled this outlier chromosome the “X element.” No one knows for sure what he meant by the letter. Maybe he saw it as an extra chromosome. Or perhaps he thought it was an ex-chromosome. Maybe he used X the way mathematicians do, to refer to something unknown.

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1913

1913 Discovery of vitamin A

Elmer V. McCollum and M. Davis discovered vitamin A during 1912–1914. In 1913, Yale researchers, Thomas Osborne and Lafayette Mendel discovered that butter contained a fat-soluble nutrient soon known as vitamin A. Vitamin A was first synthesized in 1947.

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1928

Alexander Flemming's discovery of penicillin

•In 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming made a chance discovery from an already discarded, contaminated Petri dish. The mold that had contaminated the experiment turned out to contain a powerful antibiotic, penicillin. However, though Fleming was credited with the discovery, it was over a decade before someone else turned penicillin into the miracle drug that has helped save millions of lives.

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1928

Kroll and Ruska: first electron microscope

Ernst Ruska, a German engineer, researcher, and inventor who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics Hans Busch, a German physicist Max Knoll, a German engineer and professor Louis de Broglie, a French physicist who won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics. Constructed the first electron microscope. Scientists who look into the microscopic world always demand microscopes of higher and higher resolution.

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1953

Watson and Crick provide a model for DNA

•In 1962 James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their 1953 determination of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Wilkins’s colleague Rosalind Franklin, who died of cancer at the age of 37, was not so honored because the Nobel Prize can only be shared by three scientists.

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1963

John Enders isolates measles vaccine

In 1963, John Enders and colleagues transformed their Edmonston-B strain of measles virus into a vaccine and licensed it in the United States. In 1968, an improved and even weaker measles vaccine, developed by Maurice Hilleman and colleagues, began to be distributed.

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1974

First totally successful fertilization of human ovum outside human body

British gynecology professor Douglas Bevis claims to have shepherded three test tube babies through to successful birth, but the children cannot be found and Bevis’ claim is never substantiated.

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History of Biology by Candice Onukwue, Chelsea Clarke, and Deion Law

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