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Timeline of Biology and Organic Chemistry

  • 320 BC – Theophrastus begins the systematic study of botany
  • 1658 – Jan Swammerdam observes red blood cells under a microscope
  • 1663 – Robert Hooke sees cells in cork using a microscope
  • 1668 – Francesco Redi disproves theories of the spontaneous generation
    of maggots in putrefying matter
  • 1676 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes protozoa and calls them
    “animalcules
  • 1677 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes spermatozoa
  • 1683 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria
  • 1765 – Lazzaro Spallanzani disproves many theories of the spontaneous
    generation of cellular life
  • 1771 – Joseph Priestley discovers that plants convert carbon dioxide
    into oxygen
  • 1798 – Thomas Malthus discusses human population growth and food
    production in An Essay on the Principle of Population
  • 1801 – Jean Lamarck begins the detailed study of invertebrate taxonomy
  • 1809 – Jean Lamarck proposes an inheritance of acquired characteristics
    theory of evolution
  • 1817 – Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph-Bienaime Caventou isolate
    chlorophyll
  • 1828 – Karl von Baer discovers the eggs of mammals
  • 1828 – Friedrich Woehler synthesizes urea; first synthesis of an
    organic compound
  • 1836 – Theodor Schwann discovers pepsin in extracts from the stomach
    lining; first isolation of an animal enzyme
  • 1837 – Theodor Schwann shows that heating air will prevent it from
    causing putrefaction
  • 1838 – Matthias Schleiden discovers that all living plant tissue is
    composed of cells
  • 1839 – Theodor Schwann discovers that all living animal tissue is
    composed of cells
  • 1856 – Louis Pasteur states that microorganisms produce fermentation
  • 1858 – Charles R. Darwin and Alfred Wallace independently propose
    natural selection theories of evolution
  • 1858 – Rudolf Virchow proposes that cells can only arise from
    pre-existing cells
  • 1862 – Louis Pasteur convincingly disproves the spontaneous generation
    of cellular life
  • 1865 – Gregor Mendel presents his experiments on the crossbreeding of
    pea plants and postulates dominant and recessive factors
  • 1865 – Friedrich August KekulŽ von Stradonitz realizes that benzene is
    composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms in a hexagonal ring
  • 1869 – Friedrich Miescher discovers nucleic acids in the nuclei of
    cells
  • 1874 – Jacobus van ‘t Hoff and Joseph-Achille Le Bel advance a
    three-dimensional stereochemical representation of organic molecules
    and propose a tetrahedral carbon atom
  • 1876 – Oskar Hertwig and Hermann Fol show that fertilized eggs possess
    both male and female nuclei
  • 1884 – Emil Fischer begins his detailed analysis of the compositions
    and structures of sugars
  • 1898 – Martinus Beijerinck uses filtering experiments to show that
    tobacco mosaic disease is caused by something smaller than a bacteria
    which he names a virus
  • 1906 – Mikhail Tsvett discovers the chromatography technique for
    organic compound separation
  • 1907 – Ivan Pavlov demonstrates conditioned responses with salivating
    dogs
  • 1907 – Emil Fischer artificially synthesizes peptide amino acid chains
    and thereby shows that amino acids in proteins are connected by amino
    group-acid group bonds
  • 1911 – Thomas Morgan proposes that Mendelian factors are arranged in a
    line on chromosomes
  • 1926 – James Sumner shows that the urease enzyme is a protein
  • 1928 – Otto Diels and Kurt Alder discover the Diels-Alder cycloaddition
    reaction for forming ring molecules
  • 1929 – Phoebus Levene discovers the sugar deoxyribose in nucleic acids
  • 1929 – Edward Doisy and Adolf Butenandt independently discover estrone
  • 1930 – John Northrop shows that the pepsin enzyme is a protein
  • 1931 – Adolf Butenandt discovers androsterone
  • 1932 – Hans Krebs discovers the urea cycle
  • 1933 – Tadeus Reichstein artificially synthesizes vitamin C; first
    vitamin synthesis
  • 1935 – Rudolf Schoenheimer uses deuterium as a tracer to examine the
    fat storage system of rats
  • 1935 – Wendell Stanley crystallizes the tobacco mosaic virus
  • 1935 – Konrad Lorenz describes the imprinting behavior of young birds
  • 1937 – Theodosius Dobzhansky links evolution and genetic mutation in
    Genetics and the Origin of Species
  • 1938 – A living coelacanth is found off the coast of southern Africa
  • 1940 – Donald Griffin and Robert Galambos announce their discovery of
    sonar echolocation by bats
  • 1942 – Max Delbruck and Salvador Luria demonstrate that bacterial
    resistance to virus infection is caused by random mutation and not
    adaptive change
  • 1944 – Oswald Avery shows that DNA carries the genetic code in
    pneumococci bacteria
  • 1944 – Robert Woodward and William von Eggers Doering synthesize
    quinine
  • 1948 – Erwin Chargaff shows that in DNA the number of guanine units
    equals the number of cytosine units and the number of adenine units
    equals the number of thymine units
  • 1951 – Robert Woodward synthesizes cholesterol and cortisone
  • 1952 – Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase use radioactive tracers to show
    that DNA is the genetic material in bacteriophage viruses
  • 1952 – Fred Sanger, Hans Tuppy, and Ted Thompson complete their
    chromatographic analysis of the insulin amino acid sequence
  • 1952 – Rosalind Franklin uses X-ray diffraction to study the structure
    of DNA and suggests that its sugar-phosphate backbone is on its outside
  • 1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick propose a double helix structure
    for DNA
  • 1953 – Max Perutz and John Kendrew determine the structure of
    hemoglobin using X-ray diffraction studies
  • 1953 – Stanley Miller shows that amino acids can be formed when
    simulated lightning is passed through vessels containing water,
    methane, ammonia, and hydrogen
  • 1955 – Severo Ochoa discovers RNA polymerase enzymes
  • 1955 – Arthur Kornberg discovers DNA polymerase enzymes
  • 1960 – Juan Oro finds that concentrated solutions of ammonium cyanide
    in water can produce the nucleotide organic base adenine
  • 1960 – Robert Woodward synthesizes chlorophyll
  • 1967 – John Gurden uses nuclear transplantation to clone a clawed frog;
    first cloning of a vertebrate
  • 1968 – Fred Sanger uses radioactive phosphorus as a tracer to
    chromatographically decipher a 120 base long RNA sequence
  • 1970 – Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans discover DNA restriction
    enzymes
  • 1970 – Howard Temin and David Baltimore independently discover reverse
    transcriptase enzymes
  • 1972 – Robert Woodward synthesizes vitamin B-12
  • 1972 – Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge propose punctuated
    equilibrium effects in evolution
  • 1974 – Manfred Eigen and Manfred Sumper show that mixtures of
    nucleotide monomers and RNA replicase will give rise to RNA molecules
    which replicate, mutate, and evolve
  • 1974 – Leslie Orgel shows that RNA can replicate without RNA-replicase
    and that zinc aids this replication
  • 1977 – John Corliss, Jack Dymond, Louis Gordon, John Edmond, Richard
    von Herzen, Robert Ballard, Kenneth Green, David Williams, Arnold
    Bainbridge, Kathy Crane, and Tjeerd van Andel discover
    chemosynthetically based animal communities located around submarine
    hydrothermal vents on the Galapagos Rift
  • 1977 – Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam present a rapid gene sequencing
    technique which uses cloning, base destroying chemicals, and gel
    electrophoresis
  • 1977 – Fred Sanger and Alan Coulson present a rapid gene sequencing
    technique which uses dideoxynucleotides and gel electrophoresis
  • 1978 – Fred Sanger presents the 5,386 base sequence for the virus
    PhiX174; first sequencing of an entire genome
  • 1983 – Kary Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction
  • 1984 – Alec Jeffreys devises a genetic fingerprinting method
  • 1985 – Harry Kroto, J.R. Heath, S.C. O’Brien, R.F. Curl, and Richard
    Smalley discover the unusual stability of the carbon-60
    Buckminsterfullerene molecule and deduce its structure
  • 1990 – Wolfgang Kratschmer, Lowell Lamb, Konstantinos Fostiropoulos,
    and Donald Huffman discover that Buckminsterfullerene can be separated
    from soot because it is soluble in benzene
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