may 1, 1745 - Needham

Description:

Despite Redi’s previous discovery of maggots not being the result of spontaneous generation, John Needham refuted this idea with his own experiment. In the experiment, he boiled a broth containing plant and animal matter with the intention to kill the microbes but after a few days, he noticed that the broth had become cloudy due to the presence of microbial life. Thus, he concluded that this was due to life’s nature in arising spontaneously.