Biologist and their Contributions

1. Karl Ernst von Baer - Prussian–Estonian embryologist who discovered the mammalian ovum and the notochord and established the new science of comparative embryology alongsidecomparative anatomy. He was also a pioneer in geography, ethnology, and physical anthropology.

2. Hugo de Vries - Dutch botanist and geneticist who introduced the experimental study of organic evolution. His rediscovery in 1900 of Gregor Mendel’s principles of heredity and his theory of biological mutation, though considerably different from a modern understanding of the phenomenon.

3. Stephen Jay Gould - he developed in 1972 the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a revision of Darwinian theory proposing that the creation of new species through evolutionary change occurs not at slow, constant rates over millions of years but rather in rapid bursts over periods as short as thousands of years, which are then followed by long periods of stability during which organisms undergo little further change.

4. Conrad Gesner - American geneticist. Elucidated the connection between meiosis and genetic segregation. His discoveries about genes and their locations on chromosomes helped make biology into an experimental science.

5. Hamilton O. Smith – he discover a new class of restriction enzymes that recognize specific sequences of nucleotides in a molecule of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and cleave the molecule at that particular point.

6. Robert Brown - introduced the model that help describe random movements of cells which is known as particle theory, or more aptly, Brownian motion.

7. Jean Baptiste De Lamarck - A French Naturalist.He proposed inheritance of acquired characters. He discarded the idea of fixity of species.

8. Geroges Leopold Cuvier - A French Palaeontologist. He studied fossils and laid the foundation of Palantology. He also studied comparative anatomy.

9. William Castle - His early work focused on embryology, but after the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics in 1900, he turned to mammalian genetics, especially that of the guinea pig. Castle was the first to use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and it was his work that inspired T.H. Morgan to use Drosophila and the basis of Morgan's 1933 Nobel Prize.

10. George Engelmann - U.S. botanist, physician, and meteorologist who is known primarily for his botanical monographs, especially one on the cactus and also A Monography of North American Cuscutinae.

11. Archibald Vivian Hill - British physiologist and biophysicist who received the 1922 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning the production of heat in muscles. His research

helped establish the origin of muscular force in the breakdown of carbohydrates with formation of lactic acid in the absence of oxygen.

12. Arthur Kornberg - American biochemist and physician who received the 1959 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the means by which deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules are duplicated in the bacterial cell, as well as the means for reconstructing this duplication process in the test tube.

13. Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran -  French physician, pathologist, and parasitologist who discovered the parasite that causes human malaria. For this and later work on protozoal diseases he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1907.

14. George Emil Palade -  Romanian-born American cell biologist who developed tissue-preparation methods, advanced centrifuging techniques, and conducted electron microscopy studies that resulted in the discovery of several cellular structures. With Albert Claude andChristian de Duve he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1974.

15. Francesco Redi - Italian physician and poet who demonstrated that the presence of maggots in putrefying meat does not result from spontaneous generation but from eggs laid on the meat by flies.

16. Charles Robert Richet - was a French physiologist who initially investigated a variety of subjects such as neurochemistry, digestion, thermoregulation in homeothermic animals, and breathing. He won the Nobel Prize "in recognition of his work on anaphylaxis" in 1913.

17. Sir Charles Scott Sherrington - English physiologist whose 50 years of experimentation laid the foundations for an understanding of integrated nervous function in higher animals and brought him (with Edgar Adrian) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1932.

18. Stewart Springer - was a world-renowned expert on shark behavior, classification (taxonomy) and population distribution. There are more than 35 species of sharks, skates, rays and other creatures either classified by or named after him.

19. Louis Pasteur - Created the process of pasteurization for treating milk and wine.

20. Edward Jenner – he is considered as the “father of immunology” mainly because of his pioneering work on the smallpox vaccine and the use of vaccination.