The Story of Biology Flashcards
Divisions of biology
Started with only two, zoology and botany. Now there’s thousands.
Miller-Urey experiment
Simulated the beginning of all life (primordial soup). Interactions between the sea and atmosphere to generate amino acids
Pasteur and microbial growth
Countered the idea of spontaneous generation, by exposing nutrient broth to air and no air to show the growth of bacteria.
Taxonomy
Naming, describing and classifying organisms
Aristotle’s logic in the ordering of life
Inanimate just exists
Plants exist and reproduce
Animals exist, reproduce and move
Man exists, reproduces and reasons
Linneaus
Came up with a system of naming living things, binomial nomenclature genus species
Whittaker
three, four and five kingdom classification systems
William Harvey
Discovered circulation
Vesalius
Diagrammed all blood vessels through the body using dissection. Published Seven Books on the Fabric of the Human Body
Henry Gray
Published Gray’s anatomy in 1850s, still used
Gunther von Hagens
Invented plastination for preserving organs for education
First heart transplant
1967, Cape Town. Patient only lived eighteen more days
Cyclosporin
an immunosuppressant that allowed for successful organ transplants
Karl Landsteiner
Discovered blood typing in the early 20th century. All previous blood transfusions would prove fatal to
What were early understandings of diabetes?
The body melts down into urine (because of the increased water intake and urination of patients)
Paul Langerhans
Fist documented the pancreas on a microscopic level
German scientists Minkowski and Mering
Removed pancreas from dogs and observed diabetes symptoms. Concluded that something produced in the pancreas controlled the metabolism.
Swammerdam
Looked to disprove previous understandings on insects (had no internal anatomy and originated from spontaneous generation). Came up with four kinds of metamorphoses.
Gelatin
Discovered to come from boiling bones, suggested to feed the poor. After ten years of scientific evaluation following revolts, it was concluded that gelatine was not a complete food.
Discovery of vitamins
We had germ theory, but did not understand how diseases such as scurvy came about. When Paris had its milk supply cut off, children began to die as a result. Came to the conclusion there was something life sustaining in the milk.
University of Toronto
Discovered insulin in the 1920s. 30 years after Minkowski and Meyer’s experiments
