1. Evolutionary Scientist Timeline
Evolutionary Theory
Evolutionary Scientist Timeline

2. Francesco Redi (1668)
First scientist to disprove spontaneous generation by showing that flies come from other flies

3. John Needham (1745)
Scientist who attempted to prove microorganisms are formed by spontaneous generation.

4. Lazzaro Spallanzani
Scientist who disproved John Needham’s experiment

5. Louis Pasteur (1859)
French scientist who conducted an experiment that disproved spontaneous generation once and for all.
Considered the Father of Microbiology and Immunology

6. Thomas Malthus
Scientist who studied population growth and introduced the concept that organisms produce too many offspring for their environment and some will die.
“Struggle for existence”

7. Jean-Baptiste de Lamark
French scientist who believed organisms were continually created from nonliving matter and that organisms become more complex over time.
Inheritance of Acquired Traits

8. Charles Darwin
Father of Evolution – his trip on the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos Islands greatly influenced his ideas and lead to the publication of Of the Origin of Species

9. Charles Lyell
Geologist who published Principles of Geology stating that the changes on the surface of the Earth occurred over a long period of time.

10. Alfred Russel Wallace
Scientist who had concluded the same ideas about evolution as Darwin.

11. Oparin-Haldane
Scientists combined ideas of how life on Earth could have formed gradually from nonliving chemicals.

12. Miller and Urey
Scientists who created an experiment to prove that organic molecules could form from gases present when the Earth formed.

13. Sidney Fox
Scientist who conducted experiments to see if functioning proteins could form spontaneously, formed protocells.