2013, Scientists cloned a cell from a human baby
with a rare genetic disorder. This created a source of embryonic stem cells
that could be used in treatment.
20/5/2010, Craig Venter announced the
creation of the world’s first synthetic organism.
11/8/2004, The first licences for the cloning of human embryos
were granted in Britain.
28/5/2003, The first horse cloned by Italian scientists, Prometea, was born
14/4/2003, The Human Genome Project, to completely map
the human genome, was completed.
15/2/2001, An initial version of the Human Genome Sequence was released.
23/7/1998, A team of scientists at the University of Hawaii,
led by Ryuzo Yanagimachi, announced
they had produced three generations of cloned mice.
24/2/1997. The cloned sheep, Dolly,
was presented to the public. She had been cloned from a single cell of her
mother at the Royal Institute in Edinburgh. There was moral panic about the
possibility of cloning humans, but some
saw it as a useful way to create organs for transplant. Lamb 6LL3 was named
after Dolly Parton. The animal died
prematurely in February 2003.
24/1/1988, Biochemist Charles
Glen King, who first isolated vitamin C, died in Westchester,
Pennsylvania.
1987, Two calves, called Fusion
and Copy, were successfully cloned from embryonic cells.
5/1/1987, Genetic
fingerprinting was first used to catch a murderer, Colin Pitchfork. Police asked
all men in Narborough, Leicestershire, to take DNA tests after two 15 year old
girls were killed.
1984, An egg
cell emptied of its nucleus was fused with a cell from a lamb embryo, resulting
in the birth of three live cloned lambs.
18/4/1984, Kenneth S Cole, US biophysicist, died.
22/5/1983, Albert Claude, Belgian biologist, died.
10/3/1983, Ulf von Euler, Swedish biochemist, died.
15/8/1982, Hugo Theorell, Swedish biochemist, died.
22/11/1981, Hans Krebs, British biochemist,
died aged 81.
9/3/1980, Max Delbruck, German-US
microbiologist, died in Pasadena, California.
6/8/1979, Feodor Lynen, German biochemist,
died in Munich.
11/12/1978, Vincent du Vigneaud, US
biochemist, dies in Scarsdale, New York, USA.
1977, Genetech began to synthesis medicines by
use of recombinant DNA.
20/11/1976, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko,
Soviet biologist, died in Kiev, Ukraine.
31/5/1976, J L Monod, French biochemist, died aged 66.
24/4/1976, Henrik Dam, Danish biochemist, died aged 81.
1975, The technique of cellular
transfer of nuclear material was used to succesfuly transfer material in
mammalian cells.
5/11/1975, Edward Lawrie Tatum, US biochemist, died in
New York City, USA.
1973, Stanley Cohen (Stanford
University) and Herbert
Boyer (University of California) inserted recombinant DNA into a
bacteria which then cloned this new DNA. This was the start of genetic
engineering.
1972, Paul Berg, st Stanford
University, combined the DNA from two different viruses.
1970, At John Hopkins
University, Hamilton
Smith and Daniel Nathans discovered restriction enzymes,
chemical scissors that snipped RNA molecules.
1/8/1970, Otto Heinrich Warburg, German biochemist, died
in Berlin-Dahlem.
5/4/1970, Alfred Henry Sturtevant, US geneticist, died
in Pasadena, California.
16/2/1970, Francis Peyton Rous, who discovered that
viruses can cause cancer, died in New York City, USA.
1965, RNA synthesis of protein
was achieved in a test tube; the code of three bases for each amino acid was
discovered.
4/6/1962, Charles William Beebe, US naturalist, died at
Simla Research Station, Trinidad.
26/10/1957, Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori, Czech-US
biochemist, died in St Louis, Missouri.
7/10/1955, Henry Clapp Sherman, US biochemist, died in
Rensselaer, New York, USA.
8/1/1955, Sir Arthur Keith, British anthropologist,
died.
16/11/1954, Albert Francis Blakeslee, US botanist, died in
Northampton, Massachusetts.
25/4/1953, James Watson and Francis Crick described the
double-helix structure of DNA in
Nature magazine.
1952, A tadpole was cloned using
the new technique of transfer of cellular nuclearnaterial to a new cell.
16/5/1947, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, English
biochemist, died in Cambridge.
17/4/1946, George Kohler, German biologist, was born
(died 1995).
4/12/1945, T H Morgan, US biologist, died aged 79.
1944, O A T Overy of Rockerfeller
University, working with the pneumonia bacterium, established that genes were
made from DNA.
26/1/1943, Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov, Russian botanist,
died as a result of mistreatment by Soviet prison guards. He had been
imprisoned for opposing the views of Trofim Lysenko, who held that acquired traits
could be inherited.
22/12/1942, Franz Boas, anthropologist, born 9/7/1858 in
Minden, Germany, died in New York.
3/3/1939, Edmund Beecher Wilson, US zoologist, died in
New York City.
7/3/1938, David Baltimore, US biologist, was born.
19/7/1936, Herbert Boyer, biotechnologist,
was born.
27/2/1936, Death of Ivan Pavlov
(born 14/9/1849 in Ryazan, Russia). He is famous for his work on conditioned
reflexes in dogs.
20/8/1935, In the US, H McLean
announced the isolation of Vitamin E.
15/3/1934, Davidson Black, Canadian
anthropologist, died in Beijing, China.
19/5/1933, Edward de Bono,
who developed the concept of lateral thinking, was born.
1932, In Germany the biochemist Hans Krebs
described the citric acid cycle in cells, where sugars, fats and proteins are
converted into carbon dioxide, water and energy.
23/8/1931, Hamilton Othaniel Smith was born in New York
City, USA. In 1970 he discovered the first ‘restriction enzyme’, one that cuts
DNA at a specific base juncture.
20/3/1931, Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, Russian biologist, died
in Alma Ata, USSR.
30/6/1926, Paul Berg was born in New York City, USA. In
1974 he recommended a halt to genetic engineering experiments.
7/4/1925, Charles Yanofsky was born in New York City,
USA. In 1967 he helped crack the DNA code for proteins.
9/1/1922, Hans Gobind Khorana, biochemist, was born in
Raipur, India.
1921, The first polygraph (lie
detector) was built, by John Larson of the Berkely Police Department,
California.
5/10/1921, Mahlon Bush Hoagland, US biologist, was born
in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1955 he established the role of transfer-RNA.
20/6/1920, Dmitri Iosifovich, Russian botanist, died.
17/6/1920, Francois Jacob was born in Nancy, France. In
1960, along with Jacques Monod (born 9/2/1910, Paris, France), he proved in
1960 that messenger RNA exists.
31/1/1920, Wilhelm Pfeffer, German botanist, died in
Kassel, Hesse.
28/8/1919, Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, who invented the EMI
scanner and winner of the Nobel prize for psychology in 1979, was born.
8/6/1918, Francis H Crick was born in Northampton, UK.
In 1953, along with James Dewey Watson (born Chicago, USA,
6/4/1928) he developed the double-helix model for DNA.
2/10/1917, Rene de Duve, cytologist, was born in Thames
Ditton, England. In 1974 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for electron microscopy
and cell structure studies.
24/3/1917, John Cowdery Kendrew was born in Oxford,
England. In `1960 he determined the molecular structure of myoglobain, similar
to haemoglobin.
1913, Richard Willstatter discovered the composition
of chlorophyll. In the US, E McCollum isolated vitamin A.
19/11/1912,
Rumanian-US physiologist George Emil Palade was born in Iasi, Rumania.
In 1956 he discovered the that the small bodies within cells now known as
ribosomes, are mostly RNA. It was soon afterwards found that this was where the
cell manufactures proteins.
24/3/1912,
Biochemist Sidney
Walter Fox was born in Los Angeles, California.
8/4/1911, Melvin Calvin
was born in St Paul, Minnesota, USA. In 1945 he investigated photosynthesis in
plants using carbon-14.
6/4/1911, Feodor Lynen,
medical researcher, was born in Munich., Germany.
9/2/1910, J L Monod, French biochemist, was born (died
1976).
18/8/1908, English plant pathologist Frederick Charles Bawden was
born in North Tawton.
11/8/1905, Austrian-American biochemist Erwin Chargaff was born in Czernowitz.
He demonstrated in the 1940s that for DNA the number of adenine and thymine
bases, and the number of cytosine and guanine bases, were equal. This was an
important clue to the structure of DNA.
24/3/1903, Adolf Friedrich Butenandt was born in Bremerhaven,
Germany. In 1929 he isolated estrone, a female sex hormone.
4/3/1903, William Clouser Boyd was born in Dearborn,
USA. In 1956 he classified the human races by blood type, finding that the
Basques were the last of an earlier European people.
1902, A salamander became the
first vertebrate to be ‘cloned’ using the technique of splitting a two-celled
embryo.
18/5/1901, Vincent du Vigneaud, US biochemist, was born.
28/2/1901, Dr Linus Pauling, American biochemist and
twice winner of the Nobel Prize, was born in Portland, Oregon.
30/10/1900, Physiologist Ragnar Arthur Granit was born in Helsinki.
25/1/1900, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Russian-American
biologist who studied population genetics, was born in Nemtrov, Russia.
25/9/1898, Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet, French
anthropologist, died at St Germain en Laye.
25/6/1898, German botanist Ferdinand Julius Cohn died in
Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland).
19/4/1898, Biologist Charles Naudin died.
20/7/1897, Tadeusz Reichstein was born in Wloclawek, Poland. In 1933 he
succeeded in synthesising ascorbic acid (vitamin C).
13/11/1893, Adelbert Edward Doisy, US biochemist, was born
in Hume, Illinois.
5/11/1892, John Haldane, pioneer in genetic research, was born.
25/11/1887, Russian botanist Nikolay Vavilov was born in
Moscow.
19/11/1887, James Batcheller Sumner was born in Canton,
Massachusetts, USA. In 1926 he crystallised urea, the first enzyme to be
crystallised, and established that is was a protein.
1885,
Two-celled seas urchins were split into single cells, which developed into the
first pair of genetically-identical ‘cloned’ organisms.
12/4/1884, Otto Fritz
Meyerhof, German biochemist, was born in Hanover. He studied the
conversion of glycogen to lactic acid during muscular exertion.
6/1/1884, Gregor Mendel, Augustine monk and botanist who
pioneered the study of genetics, died in Brunn, Austria, aged 62.
19/4/1882. Charles Darwin,
who developed his theory of evolution, died aged 73 near Orpington, Kent. He
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
11/1/1882, Theodore Schwann, German physiologist, was
born in Cologne.
15/2/1873, Hans von Euler Chelpin, Swedish, was born in
Augsburg, Germany. In 1929 he, along with Sir Arthur Harden, were awarded the Nobel
Prize for their research into sugar fermentation.
1/4/1872, Hugo von Mohl, German botanist, was born in
Tubingen, Baden-Wurttemberg.
1869, Gregor Mendel’s experiments with
pea plants helped establish the mechanisms of heredity.
25/6/1866, Thomas Hunt Morgan was born in Lexington,
Kentucky. In 1907 he began his work
with fruit flies, drosophila melanogaster, to establish the laws of heredity.
9/11/1864, Russian biologist Dmitri Ivanovsky was born in
Gdov. In 1892 he proved the existence of viruses.
24/11/1859. Charles Darwin, born 12/2/1809, published The Origin of the Species.
1/7/1858. Charles Darwin
first presented his theory of evolution, to the Linnean Society.
18/6/1858, Charles Darwin received a letter from Alfred Russell
Wallace, who had formulated a theory of evolution through survival of the
fittest. This was close to Darwin’s ideas in his as yet unpublished Origin of the Species.
1856, Claude Bernard discovered that
the liver stores glucose as glycogen, to be converted back to glucose when the
body needs energy.
3/11/1854, Jokichi Takamine was born in Takaoka, Japan.
In 1901 he artificially synthesised adrenaline.
15/10/1852, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, founder of the
gymnastic movement (Turnverein) in Germany, died at Freyburg aged 74.
22/1/1840, Anthropologist Johann Blumenbach was born in
Gottingen, Saxony, Germany.
22/2/1794, German physiologist Kaspar Wolff died in St
Petersburg, Russia.
22/3/1788, Pierre Pelletier was born in Paris. In 1817 he
jointly discovered chlorophyll with Joseph Bienaime Caventou (born 30/6/1795 in
Saint Omer, France).
1/8/1744, The Chevalier de Lamarck, naturalist, was born.
9/9/1841, Augustin Candolle, Swiss
botanist (born 4/2/1778) died.
1/7/1838. Charles Darwin presented a paper on his evolutionary theory.
1837, The significance of chlorophyll to plant photosynthesis was
realised by the French scientist Rene Joachim Henri Dutrochet, 61.
1833, Anselme Payen discovered the
first enzyme,
diastase. It speeds the conversion of starch to sugar.
27/12/1831. The Admiralty survey ship The Beagle left
Plymouth with Charles Darwin on board
on a scientific voyage around the world. This led to Darwin’s controversial book, The
Origin of the Species. Darwin was inspired by Professor Henslow (1796-1861), a
renowned mineralogist at Cambridge, 13 years older than Darwin, who was elected
unopposed to the Chair of Botany at Cambridge when that position fell vacant. Henslow
supported ‘evolutionary’ theories, although retaining a strong religious faith.
18/12/1829, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Lamarck,
French scientist, died aged 75. He believed that extra usage of some feature of an animal strengthened it,
and this enhancement could be passed down the generations.
24/1/1828, German botanist Ferdinand Julius Cohn was born
in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). In 1850 he showed that plant and animal
cytoplasm were essentially the same.
8/2/1825, Henry Walter Bates was born in Leicester,
England. His theory of insect mimicry, developed during an 11-year stay in
South America, contributed to the acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
1824, English physician Peter Mark
Roger discovered that the human eye can retain an image for a fraction of a second
after it has seen it. This became the basis for converting a rapid
series of still images into an apparently animated film which the brain sees as
continuous motion.
22/7/1822, Gregor Mendel, Austrian monk and botanist who
discovered the principles of modern genetics, was born at Heinzendorf near Odrau, in
Austrian Silesia.
16/2/1822. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin,
founder of a new science called eugenics,
was born in Birmingham, England. Among his ideas was the systematic creation of
a superior race of human beings, an idea later adopted by Hitler.
31/8/1821, Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz was born in
Potsdam, Prussia. He researched the relationship between nerve cells and nerve
fibres.
29/8/1821, Anthropologist Louis Laurent Mortillet was born
in Meylan, Isere, France. He subdivided the Palaeolithic (older Stone Age) into
separate periods, based on the tools in use at the time.
1819, Naturalist Henri Braconnot,
born in Commercy, France, on 29/5/1781, obtained glucose from
sawdust, linen and bark. This proved that plant materials such as cellulose
were made up from this sugar.
13.8/1819, Erik
Acharius, Swedish botanist (born 28/4/1753) died 13/8/1819 in Wadstena.
1817, Chlorophyll was discovered by Pierre Pelletier (born in Paris
22/3/178, and Joseph Benaime Caventou (born St Omer, 30/6/1795).
6/7/1817, Rudolf Albert von Kolliker was born in Zurich,
Switzerland. In 1844 he showed that the egg is a cell and all cells in the
organism originate by divisions from the egg cell.
5/3/1815, Friedrich Mesmer, German doctor who developed
the theory of animal
magnetism, or mesmerism, for curing diseases, died aged 80.
18/11/1810, Botanist Asa Gray was born in Sauquoit, New York, USA.
8/7/1810, Gabriel Gustav Valentin, Swiss-German
physiologist, was born in Breslau (Wroclaw, now Poland). Along with Jan
Purkinje, he discovered, in 1834, the role of the cilia in moving the ovum
along the oviduct.
12/2/1809, Charles Darwin was born. His father, Robert Darwin, was a doctor and
financier, and his mother, Susannah Darwin, was the daughter of pottery
magnate Josiah Wedgewood.
2/2/1802, Jean Baptiste Dieudonne Boussingault was born
in Paris. In 1840 he proved that plants obtain their nitrogen from nitrates in
the soil.
14/7/1801, German physiologist Johannes Peter Muller was born
in Koblenz. He researched the action of the nerves.
4/12/1798. Luigi Galvani, Italian scientist who researched animal electricity,
died.
24/7/1794, Russian zoologist Christian Pander was born in
Riga. He studied the development of the chick embryo.
2/2/1793, William Aiton, Scottish botanist, born 1731,
died.
28/2/1792, Russian biologist Karl Ernst von Baer was born in
Peip, Estonia, In 1827 he reported his discovery that humans and other mammals
developed from internal eggs.
1779, Lazzaro Spallanzani
studied animal reproduction, proving that for fertilisation to take place the
sperm must make physical contact with the egg,
1779, Jan Ingenhousz,
in Experiments on vegetables,
concluded that sunlight is essential for production of oxygen by leaves. He
discovered two separate respiratory cycles in plants; in the day, carbon
disoxide is absorbed and oxygen released; at night the process reverses. The
exact nature of the gases involved was clear with Lavoisier’s discoveries.
4/2/1778, Augustin
Candolle, Swiss botanist (died 9/9/1841) was born.
10/1/1778, Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish
botanist who devised the modern
system of naming and classifying plants, died in Uppsala.
17/8/1771. The Birmingham scientist Joseph Priestley discovered that oxygen is released from growing plants.
14/9/1769, Birth of Baron von Humboldt, German scientist who explored
Central and South America, and founded the science of ecology.
1761, The first vetinary school
opened, in Lyons, France.
10/10/1757, Erik Acharius, Swedish botanist (died 13/8/1819 in
Wadstena) was born.
9/9/1737, Luigi Galvani, Italian scientist
and anatomist, was born in Bologna.
1736, Linnaeus classified the plant species.
23/5/1734, Franz Anton Mesmer, Austrian
doctor and founder of Mesmerism, was
born near Constance. He was the son of a gamekeeper.
23/5/1707, Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist who established principles for
classifying living organisms, was born as Carl Linne, the son of the
parish clergyman of Rashult.
17/9/1683, The Dutch
scientist Antonie
van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society to report his discovery
of bacteria.
See also Medical.
1648, Jan Baptista von Hellmont proved by
experimentation that the increase in weight of a growing willow tree did not
come from the soil in which it was planted. This result was published after his
death in Ortus Medicinae (‘On the
development of medicine’).
22/11/1635,
Naturalist Francis
Willoughby was born in Middleton, England. His systematic work on
birds and fish helped pave the way for Linnaeus’ classification.
345 BCE, Aristotle produced the first
animal classification system, dividing some 500 known species into 8 classes.