History of Biology

Bio 101- Introduction to Biological Sciences

I. Brief History of Biology. List down the contribution(s) of the following philisophers/scientists to the science of Biology
Pre-historic people: The earliest humans must have had and passed on knowledge about plants and animals to increase their chances of survival. This may have included knowledge of human and animal anatomy and aspects of animal behavior (such as migration patterns). However, the first major turning point in biological knowledge came with the Neolithic Revolution about 10,000 years ago. Humans first domesticated plants for farming, then livestock animals to accompany the resulting sedentary societies.
Egyptians and Babylonians: Over a dozen medical papyri have been preserved, most notably the Edwin Smith Papyrus (the oldest extant surgical handbook) and the Ebers Papyrus (a handbook of preparing and using materia medica for various diseases), both from the 16th Century BCE. Ancient Egypt is also known for developing embalming, which was used for mummification, in order to preserve human remains and forestall decomposition.
Ancient Mesopotamian medicine may be represented by Esagil-kin-apli, a prominent scholar of the 11th Century BCE, who made a compilation of medical prescriptions and procedures, which he presented as exorcisms.
Hebrews: Kil'ayim (Hebrew: כלאים, lit. Mixture or Confusion) is the fourth tractate of Seder Zeraim ("Order of Seeds") of the Mishnah and of the Talmud. There is both a Mishnah Kil'ayim (m. Kil.) and a Tractate Kil'ayim (t. Kil.). Kil'ayim deals with the laws of various forbidden production and uses of mixtures, as provided in Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:9-11. Specifically, it discusses planting mixtures of seeds, grafting, mixtures of vineyards, crossbreeding animals, and working with a team of different kinds of animals, and shaatnez (clothes containing a mixture of linen and wool). There is a Gemara from the Jerusalem Talmud. It was taught to the Hebrews by their rabbis.
GREEKS
Anaximander of Miletus (611-546 B.C.) - Anaximander speculated about the beginnings and origin of animal life. Taking into account the existence of fossils, he claimed that animals sprang out of the sea long ago. The first animals were born trapped in a spiny bark, but as they got older, the bark would dry up and break. As the early humidity evaporated, dry land emerged and, in time, humankind had to adapt. The 3rd century Roman writer Censorinus reports:
Anaximander of Miletus considered that from warmed up water and earth emerged either fish or entirely fishlike animals. Inside these animals, men took form and embryos were held prisoners until puberty; only then, after these animals burst open, could men and women come out, now able to feed themselves. Anaximander put forward the idea that humans had to spend part of this transition inside the mouths of big fish to protect themselves from the Earth's climate until they could come out in open air and lose their scales. He thought that, considering humans' extended infancy, we could not have survived in the primeval world in the same manner we do presently.
Xenophanes (579-475 B.C.) - Xenophanes of Colophon (died ca. 490 B.C.E.), who was a disciple of Anaximander, developed Anaximander's theories further. He observed fossil fishes and shells, and concluded that the land where they were found had been underwater at some time. Xenophanes taught that the world formed from the condensation of water and "primordial mud;" he was the first person known to have used fossils as evidence for a theory of the history of the Earth.
Empedocles (490 – 430 B.C.) - In a famous fragment, Empedocles attempted to explain the phenomena of respiration by means of an elaborate analogy with the clepsydra or water clock, an ancient device for transmitting liquids from one vessel to another. This fragment has sometimes been connected to a passage in Aristotle's Physics where Aristotle refers to people who twisted wineskins and captured air in clepsydras to demonstrate that void does not exist. There is however, no evidence that Empedocles performed any experiment with clepsydras. The fragment certainly implies that Empedocles knew about the corporeality of air, but he says nothing whatever about the void. The clepsydra was a common utensil and everyone who used it must have known, in some sense, that the invisible air could resist liquid.
Hippocrates (460 – 370 B.C.) - Hippocrates and his followers were first to describe many diseases and medical conditions. He is given credit for the first description of clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic suppurative lung disease, lung cancer and cyanotic heart disease. Hippocrates began to categorize illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic and epidemic, and use terms such as, "exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak, and convalescence." Another of Hippocrates' major contributions may be found in his descriptions of the symptomatology, physical findings, surgical treatment and prognosis of thoracic empyema, i.e. suppuration of the lining of the chest cavity. His teachings remain relevant to present-day students of pulmonary medicine and surgery. Hippocrates was the first documented chest surgeon and his findings and techniques, while crude, such as the use of lead pipes to drain chest wall abscess, are still valid.
Plato (427-343 B.C.) - Plato (427-347 B.C.) introduced the concept of the eidos, the unchanging ideal forms that underlie all the variable phenomena of the world. Plato suggested there were 2 worlds. 1) A real world that was ideal and eternal. 2) An illusionary world of imperfection that we perceived through our senses. Plato observed variations in plant and animal populations, but suggested that they were merely incomplete and imperfect manifestations of the ideal forms. Only the perfect forms were real. Plato's philosophy ruled out evolution thinking mainly because evolution requires variation (also see above). Moreover, evolution would be counterproductive in a world where ideal organisms were already perfectly adapted to their environments.
Heraclides of Pontus (388 – 315 B.C.)
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) - Aristotle is the earliest natural historian whose work has survived in some detail. Aristotle certainly did research on the natural history of Lesbos, and the surrounding seas and neighbouring areas. The works that reflect this research, such as History of Animals, Generation of Animals, and Parts of Animals, contain some observations and interpretations, along with sundry myths and mistakes. The most striking passages are about the sea-life visible from observation on Lesbos and available from the catches of fishermen. His observations on catfish, electric fish (Torpedo) and angler-fish are detailed, as is his writing on cephalopods, namely, Octopus, Sepia (cuttlefish) and the paper nautilus (Argonauta argo). His description of the hectocotyl arm, used in sexual reproduction, was widely disbelieved until its rediscovery in the 19th century. He separated the aquatic mammals from fish, and knew that sharks and rays were part of the group he called Selachē (selachians).Another good example of his methods comes from the Generation of Animals in which Aristotle describes breaking open fertilized chicken eggs at intervals to observe when visible organs were generated.He gave accurate descriptions of ruminants' four-chambered fore-stomachs, and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark Mustelus mustelus.
Galen of Pergamon (131 – 210 A.D.) - Galen contributed a substantial amount to the Hippocratic understanding of pathology. Under Hippocrates’ bodily humors theory, differences in human moods come as a consequence of imbalances in one of the four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Galen promoted this theory and the typology of human temperaments. An imbalance of each humor corresponded with a particular human temperament (blood—sanguine, black bile—melancholic, yellow bile—choleric, and phlegm—phlegmatic). Individuals with sanguine temperaments are extroverted and social. Choleric people have energy, passion, and charisma. Melancholics are creative, kind, and considerate. Phlegmatic temperaments are characterized by dependability, kindness, and affection.Galen’s principal interest was in human anatomy, but Roman law had prohibited the dissection of human cadavers since about 150 BC. Because of this restriction, Galen performed anatomical dissections on living (vivisection) and dead animals, mostly focusing on pigs and primates. This work was useful because the anatomical structures of these animals usually closely mirror those of humans. Galen clarified the anatomy of the trachea and was the first to demonstrate that the larynx generates the voice. In one experiment Galen used bellows to inflate the lungs of a dead animal. Among Galen’s major contributions to medicine was his work on the circulatory system. He was the first to recognize that there are distinct differences between venous (dark) and arterial (bright) blood. Although his anatomical experiments on animal models led him to a more complete understanding of the circulatory system, nervous system, respiratory system, and other structures, his work contained scientific errors.
12th to 14th centuries: The decline of the Roman Empire led to the disappearance or destruction of much knowledge, though physicians still incorporated many aspects of the Greek tradition into training and practice. In Byzantium and the Islamic world, many of the Greek works were translated into Arabic and many of the works of Aristotle were preserved. De arte venandi, by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was an influential medieval natural history text that explored bird morphology. During the High Middle Ages, a few European scholars such as Hildegard of Bingen, Albertus Magnus and Frederick II expanded the natural history canon. The rise of European universities, though important for the development of physics and philosophy, had little impact on biological scholarship. Though it is not readily recognized the Middle Ages contributed a great deal to medical knowledge. This period contained progress in surgery, medical chemistry, dissection, and practical medicine. While there might not be a huge monumental event, the Middle Ages laid the ground work for later larger discoveries. There was a slow but constant progression in the way that medicine was studied and practiced. It went from apprenticeships to universities and from oral traditions to documenting texts. The most well-known preservers of, not only medical, texts would be the monasteries. The monks were able to copy and revise medical texts that they were able to obtain. Besides documentation the Middle Ages also had one of the first well known female physian, Hildegard of Bingen.
RENAISSANCE PERIOD: 14th to 16th centuries
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) - Vesalius believed the skeletal system to be the framework of the human body. It was in this opening chapter, or book, of De fabrica that Vesalius made several of his strongest claims against Galen's theories and writings which he had put in his anatomy books. In his extensive study of the skull, Vesalius claimed that the mandible consisted of one bone, whereas Galen had thought it was two separate bones. He accurately described the vestibule in the interior of the temporal bone of the skull. Vesalius' most impressive contribution to the study of the muscular system may be the illustrations that accompany the text in De fabrica, which would become known as the "muscle men". He describes the source and position of each muscle of the body as well as providing information on their respective operations. Vesalius' work on the vascular and circulatory systems was his greatest contribution to the complex and modern medicine. In his dissections of the heart, Vesalius became convinced that Galen's claims of a porous Interventricular septum were false.This fact was previously described by Michael Servetus, fellow of Vesalius, but never reached the public, for it was written down in the "Manuscript of Paris", in 1546, and just published later in his Christianismi Restitutio (1553), an heretic book for the Inquisition. Vesalius published in the second edition that the septum was indeed waterproof, discovering (and naming), the mitral valve to explain the blood flow.
William Harvey - He was the first to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and body by the heart
The Era of Modern Biology
Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723) - Leeuwenhoek made more than 500 optical lenses. He also created at least 25 microscopes, of differing types, of which only nine survived. His microscopes were made of silver or copper frames, holding hand-made lenses. Those that have survived are capable of magnification up to 275 times. It is suspected that Leeuwenhoek possessed some microscopes that could magnify up to 500 times. Although he has been widely regarded as a dilettante or amateur, his scientific research was of remarkably high quality. Leeuwenhoek's main discoveries are: the infusoria (protists in modern zoological classification), in 1674; the bacteria, (e.g., large Selenomonads from the human mouth), in 1676; the vacuole of the cell.; the spermatozoa in 1677.; and the banded pattern of muscular fibers, in 1682.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) - In 1665 Hooke published Micrographia, a book describing observations made with microscopes and telescopes, as well as some original work in biology. Hooke coined the term cell for describing biological organisms, the term being suggested by the resemblance of plant cells to monks' cells. The hand-crafted, leather and gold-tooled microscope he used to make the observations for Micrographia, originally constructed by Christopher White in London, is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC.
Regnier de Graaf (1541-1673) - His eponymous legacy are the Graafian (or ovarian) follicles. He himself pointed out that he was not the first to describe them, but described their development. From the observation of pregnancy in rabbits, he concluded that the follicle contained the oocyte, although he never observed it. The mature stage of the ovarian follicle is called the Graafian follicle in his honour, although others, including Fallopius, had noticed the follicles previously (but failed to recognize its reproductive significance). The term Graafian follicle followed the introduction of the term ova Graafiana by Albrecht von Haller who like De Graaf still assumed that the follicle was the oocyte itself, although De Graaf realised the ovum was much smaller. The discovery of the human egg was eventually made by Karl Ernst von Baer in 1827. De Graaf's contemporary Jan Swammerdam confronted him after his publication of DeMulierum Organis Generatione Inservientibu and accused him of taking credit of discoveries he and Johannes van Horne had made earlier regarding the importance of the ovary and its eggs. De Graaf issued a rebuttal but was affected by the accusation.
Francesco Redi (1626-1697) - Redi is most well known for his series of experiments, published in 1668 as Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degl'Insetti (Experiments on the Generation of Insects), which is regarded as his masterpiece and a milestone in the history of modern science. The book is one of the first steps in refuting "spontaneous generation" - a theory also known as Aristotelian abiogenesis. At the time, prevailing wisdom was that maggots arose spontaneously from rotting meat. Redi's experiment on abiogenesis. Redi took six jars and divided in two groups of three: In one experiment, in the first jar of each group, he put an unknown object; in the second, a dead fish; in the last, a raw chunk of veal. Redi covered the tops of the first group jars with fine gauze so that only air could get into it. He left the other group open. After several days, he saw maggots appear on the objects in the open jars, on which flies had been able to land, but not in the gauze-covered jars. In the second experiment, meat was kept in three jars. One of the jars was uncovered, and two of the jars were covered, one with cork and the other one with gauze. Flies could only enter the uncovered jar, and in this, maggots appeared. In the jar that was covered with gauze, maggots appeared on the gauze but did not survive. He continued his experiments by capturing the maggots and waiting for them to metamorphose, which they did, becoming flies. Also, when dead flies or maggots were put in sealed jars with dead animals or veal, no maggots appeared, but when the same thing was done with living flies, maggots did. Knowing full well the terrible fates of out-spoken scientists like Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei, Redi was careful to express his new views in a manner that would not contradict to theological tradition of the Church; hence, his interpretations were always based on biblical passages, such as his famous adage: omne vivum ex vivo ("All life comes from life").
Karl von Linné / Carolus Linnaeus (1707 to 1778) – Published works such as Systema Naturae, and Species Plantarum. Systema Naturae concerns with the taxonomy of animals and plants while Species Plantarum lists every species of plant known at the time, classified into genera.
William “Strata” Smith (1769 – 1839) - Stratigraphy developed in England during the early 1800s with the work of a land surveyor named William Smith. Using stratigraphic concepts, 19th-century geologists clearly demonstrated that the earth was far older than a million years. He was the first to study the distribution of fossils scientifically. He studied the order of rock strata or layers and noted that the same strata in different areas of England contained the same fossils. He found he could actually use the fossils in the various strata as indicators of which rock layer he was examining.
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) - In 1798, he published the Principle of Population where he made the observations that the human race would be likely to overproduce if the population size was not kept under control. Malthus then focused his studies on the human race. His calculations and theories produced an idea that the human population would increase geometrically while the food supply and natural resources would only increase arithmetically. This is a potential explanation for the predicted poverty and famine. He concluded that as more offspring are born, a more competitive nature would arise. As more offspring come into the population, fewer resources will be available for the population. This has the potential for competition between organisms for survival due to lack of resources. This competitive nature would be necessary for survival of individuals within a large population size unable to be supported by the environment. He believed that this uncontrollable population size would eventually be the cause of famine and poverty among humans. His reasoning behind this idea was divine intervention. He believed that this would be the punishment for man if he became too lazy. Malthus’ Principle of Population caused Darwin to rethink many issues while coming up with his theory of natural selection. Malthus’ work made Darwin realize the importance of overpopulation and how it was necessary to have variability in different populations. Darwin also used Malthus’ ideas to use competition as well as the survival in numbers idea to come up with his full idea of natural selection.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) - Lamarck stressed two main themes in his biological work. The first was that the environment gives rise to changes in animals. He cited examples of blindness in moles, the presence of teeth in mammals and the absence of teeth in birds as evidence of this principle. The second principle was that life was structured in an orderly manner and that many different parts of all bodies make it possible for the organic movements of animals. Although he was not the first thinker to advocate organic evolution, he was the first to develop a truly coherent evolutionary theory.[7] He outlined his theories regarding evolution first in his Floreal lecture of 1800, and then in three later published works: Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivants, 1802. Philosophie Zoologique, 1809. Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres, (in seven volumes, 1815–1822). Lamarck employed several mechanisms as drivers of evolution, drawn from the common knowledge of his day and from his own belief in chemistry pre-Lavoisier. He used these mechanisms to explain the two forces he saw as comprising evolution; a force driving animals from simple to complex forms, and a force adapting animals to their local environments and differentiating them from each other. He believed that these forces must be explained as a necessary consequence of basic physical principles, favoring a materialistic attitude toward biology.
Karl von Baer (1792-1876) - von Baer studied the embryonic development of animals, discovering the blastula stage of development and the notochord. Together with Heinz Christian Pander and based on the work by Caspar Friedrich Wolff he described the germ layer theory of development (ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm) as a principle in a variety of species, laying the foundation for comparative embryology in the book Über Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere (1828). In 1826 Baer discovered the mammalian ovum. The first human ovum was described by Edgar Allen in 1928. In 1827 he completed research Ovi Mammalium et Hominis genesi for Saint-Petersburg's Academy of Science (published at Leipzig) and established that mammals develop from eggs.He formulated what became known as Baer's laws of embryology: General characteristics of the group to which an embryo belongs develop before special characteristics. General structural relations are likewise formed before the most specific appear. The form of any given embryo does not converge upon other definite forms, but separates itself from them. The embryo of a higher animal form never resembles the adult of another animal form, such as one less evolved, but only its embryo.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) - Charles Darwin was the founder of modern evolutionary thought, and the developer, along with Alfred Russel Wallace, of the theory that natural selection is a principle driving force in evolution. Darwin is generally recognized as the single greatest thinker in the history of biology, whose contributions provided the basis for understanding the immense diversity that characterizes the natural world.
Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) - British naturalist, collector of wildlife specimens, and author who was one of the first to formulate the groundbreaking theory of evolution by natural selection. Wallace's theory was made public at the same time as that of Charles Robert Darwin. Wallace and Darwin worked independently, each unaware of the other's research. Yet both developed the same insight into the biological mechanism by which species gradually change by adapting to the particular pressures and requirements of their environment. At a time when most people believed that species were the fixed and unchanging product of divine creation, this theory was revolutionary.
Lazzaro Spallanzani (1765 - 1767) - Spallanzani was a Catholic who researched in 1768 the theory of the spontaneous generation of microbes. At the time, the microscope was already available to researchers, and using it, the proponents of the theory, Buffon and Needham, came to the conclusion that there is a life-generating force inherent to certain kinds of inorganic matter that causes living microbes to create themselves if given sufficient time. Spallanzani's experiment showed that it is not an inherent feature of matter, and that it can be destroyed by an hour of boiling. As the microbes did not re-appear as long as the material was hermetically sealed, he proposed that microbes move through the air and that they could be killed through boiling. Needham argued that experiments destroyed the "vegetative force" that was required for spontaneous generation to occur. Spallanzani paved the way for research by Louis Pasteur, who defeated the theory of spontaneous generation almost a century later. Spallanzani discovered and described animal (mammal) reproduction, showing that it requires both semen and an ovum. He was the first to perform in vitro fertilization, with frogs, and an artificial insemination, using a dog. Spallanzani showed that some animals, especially newts, can regenerate some parts of their body if injured or surgically removed. Spallanzani is also credited with the classification of tardigrades, which are one of the most durable extremophiles still to this day.(See Binomial Nomenclature) Spallanzani is also famous for extensive experiments on the navigation in complete darkness by bats, where he concluded that bats use sound and their ears for navigation in total darkness (see animal echolocation). He was the pioneer of the original study of echolocation, though his study was limited to what he could observe. Later scientists moved onto studies of the sensory mechanisms and processing of this information. His great work, however, is the Dissertationi di fisica animale e vegetale (2 vols, 1780). Here he first interpreted the process of digestion, which he proved to be no mere mechanical process of trituration - that is, of grinding up the food - but one of actual chemical solution, taking place primarily in the stomach, by the action of the gastric juice. He also carried out important researches on fertilization in animals (1780).
Louis Pasteur (1864) - Pasteur demonstrated that fermentation is caused by the growth of micro-organisms, and the emergent growth of bacteria in nutrient broths is due not to spontaneous generation, but rather to biogenesis (Omne vivum ex vivo "all life from life"). Pasteur's later work on diseases included work on chicken cholera. During this work, a culture of the responsible bacteria had spoiled and failed to induce the disease in some chickens he was infecting with the disease. Upon reusing these healthy chickens, Pasteur discovered he could not infect them, even with fresh bacteria; the weakened bacteria had caused the chickens to become immune to the disease, though they had caused only mild symptoms.He also invented the process of pasteurization.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) - Gregor Mendel, who is known as the "father of modern genetics", was inspired by both his professors at the University of Olomouc (Friedrich Franz & Johann Karl Nestler) and his colleagues at the monastery (e.g., Franz Diebl) to study variation in plants, and he conducted his study in the monastery's 2 hectares (4.9 acres) experimental garden, which was originally planted by Napp in 1830. Unlike Nestler, who studied hereditary traits in sheep, Mendel focused on plants. After initial experiments with pea plants, Mendel settled on studying seven traits that seemed to inherit independently of other traits: seed shape, flower color, seed coat tint, pod shape, unripe pod color, flower location, and plant height. He first focused on seed shape, which was either angular or round. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 29,000 pea plants (i.e., Pisum sativum). This study showed that one in four pea plants had purebred recessive alleles, two out of four were hybrid and one out of four were purebred dominant. His experiments led him to make two generalizations, the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment, which later came to be known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.Mendel presented his paper, Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden (Experiments on Plant Hybridization), at two meetings of the Natural History Society of Brno in Moravia on 8 February and 8 March 1865. It was received favorably and generated reports in several local newspapers. When Mendel's paper was published in 1866 in Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereins Brünn,[18] it was seen as essentially about hybridization rather than inheritance and had little impact and was cited about three times over the next thirty-five years. Notably, Charles Darwin was unaware of Mendel's paper, according to Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. His paper was criticized at the time, but is now considered a seminal work.
1870
1890 - Gerhardt Krefft first describes the Queensland lungfish, in The Sydney Morning Herald and Charles Valentine Riley confirms Phylloxera as the cause of the Great French Wine Blight.
1900s
Alexander Ivanovich Oparin (1894-1980) - Although Oparin's started out reviewing various panspermia theories, including those of Hermann von Helmholtz and William Thomson Kelvin, he was primarily interested in how life began. As early as 1922, he asserted that:
There is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter. The complex combination of manifestations and properties characteristic of life must have arisen as a part of the process of the evolution of matter.
Taking into account the recent discovery of methane in the atmospheres of Jupiter and the other giant planets, Oparin suggested that the infant Earth had possessed a strongly reducing atmosphere, containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor. In his opinion, these were the raw materials for the evolution of life.
In Oparin's formulation, there were first only simple solutions of organic matter, the behavior of which was governed by the properties of their component atoms and the arrangement of these atoms into a molecular structure. Gradually though, he said, the resulting growth and increased complexity of molecules brought new properties into being and a new colloidal-chemical order developed as a successor to more simple relationships between and among organic chemicals. These newer properties were determined by the interactions of these more complex molecules.
Oparin posited that this process brought biological orderliness into prominence. According to Oparin, competition, speed of cell growth, survival of the fittest, struggle for existence and, finally, natural selection determined the form of material organization characteristic of modern-day living things.
Oparin outlined a way he thought that basic organic chemicals might have formed into microscopic localized systems, from which primitive living things could have developed. He cited work done by de Jong on coacervates and research by others, including himself, into organic chemicals which, in solution, might spontaneously form droplets and layers. Oparin suggested that different types of coacervates could have formed in the Earth's primordial ocean and been subject to a selection process that led, eventually, to life.
Stanley Miller (1930-2007) with Harold Urey – Had an experiment named the Miller–Urey experiment, which simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested for the occurrence of chemical origins of life. Specifically, the experiment tested Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that conditions on the primitive Earth favored chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler organic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted in 1953[3] by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the following year.
James Dewey Watson & Francis Harry Compton Crick (1953) - Crick and Watson, together with Maurice Wilkins, won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of the structure of DNA. This was one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century. Watson and Crick worked together on studying the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the molecule that contains the hereditary information for cells. 2000 to present –
Stem Cell Therapy
According to CNN, scientists at Imperial College London in 2009 discovered a way to prompt bone marrow to release stem cells that aid patients in recovering from heart attacks. In succeeding in releasing these stem cells, scientists now have a way to prompt the body's own cells to release into the system and fix damaged tissue. These stem cells are released into the body by injecting patients with a protein called G-CSF that occurs naturally in the human body. With more research, say scientists, these cells could also be used to help repair broken bones and treat autoimmune diseases.
At the beginning of the 21st century, biological sciences converged with previously differentiated new and classic disciplines like Physics into research fields like Biophysics. Advances were made in analytical chemistry and physics instrumentation including improved sensors, optics, tracers, instrumentation, signal processing, networks, robots, satellites, and compute power for data collection, storage, analysis, modeling, visualization, and simulations. These technology advances allowed theoretical and experimental research including internet publication of molecular biochemistry, biological systems, and ecosystems science. This enabled worldwide access to better measurements, theoretical models, complex simulations, theory predictive model experimentation, analysis, worldwide internet observational data reporting, open peer-review, collaboration, and internet publication. New fields of biological sciences research emerged including Bioinformatics, Neuroscience, Theoretical biology, Computational genomics, Astrobiology and Synthetic Biology.