Redi’s Experiment

Francesco Redi
Francesco Redi was an Italian naturalist, physician, and poet. Besides Galileo, he was one of the most
important scientists who challenged Aristotle's traditional study of science. Redi gained fame for his
controlled experiments. One set of experiments refuted the popular notion of spontaneous generation—a
belief that living organisms could arise from nonliving matter. Redi has been called the “Father of
Modern Parasitology" and the “Founder of Experimental Biology".

Birth: February 18, 1626, in Arezzo, Italy

Death: March 1, 1697, in Pisa Italy, buried in Arezzo

Nationality: Italian (Tuscan)

Education: University of Pisa in Italy

 Introduction
In the year 1668, Francesco Redi published a work that is now
considered the basis of experimental biology.
- At the time of Francesco, Abiogenesis was popular theory that
life comes from non-living things. Spontaneous generation was
an early model for abiogenesis developed by Aristotle (384-
322 BCE) which said that, they thought maggots “generated
spontaneously” from rotten meat.
- But, Francesco doubted. He was an observer of nature and had
seen that around rotten food there were always flies.
- Francesco did more than just observe. He actually set dead
animals (snakes and fish) out in the open and observed for days
what happened to them and tried to see the maggots appear. He
saw that a lot of flies appear. And after a while, the maggots.
With the new information Redi thought a new explanation to why there were
maggots in rotten food.

He proposed that flies were doing something to the rotten food, and whatever flies
were doing, made maggots appear on the food.

Redi thought an experiment.

He would set three equal bottles with meat inside:

 One bottle he would leave open.
 A second bottle he would seal with a cork to stop the flies from reaching the
meat.
 A third bottle he would seal with a gauze, to let air pass but not flies. Because
some people believed that whatever generated the maggots was in the air.

He then predicted what would be the expected results from his experiment.
He made the experiments and got the results he predicted. Maggots
appeared on the meat the flies could get to and not on the ones they
could not reach.

From the experiments he concluded “omne vivum ex vivo” – all life

comes from life.

And that was not all. He paid attention and saw that on the gauze the flies
left eggs. This made him curious so he continued studying.

He saw that he could put those eggs on meat and see maggots come out of
them. He also saw that if he put maggots on meat they would eventually
become flies. He described the life cycle of the fly.

This way began the serious experimental approach in Biology.

One century later Lazzaro Spallanzani would give more good arguments
against Spontaneous Generation and another century later Louis Pasteur
would finish disproving it.
Thank You!