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Samford University -- Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
International Studies

Elementary My Dear Watson (and Crick): A British History of Biology and Medicine and How It Was Communicated
Biol 205 (Biology in Great Britain)  Spring 2014  Daniel House, London

A Selected Timeline of the History of Modern Biology and Medicine
(mostly from that infallible source know as Wikipedia: 1, 2)
(bold entries are British or British related)(bold, red entries are those upon which we will concentrate)

Please to do not memorize this list. It will serve as a road map to our travels this semester.

1518
- College of Physicians founded, now known as Royal College of Physicians of London
1540
- 1604 William Clowes (surgeon)
1553 - Miguel Serveto describes the circulation of blood through the lungs He is accused of heresy and burned at the stake
1556 - Amato Lusitano describes venous valves in the Azigos vein
1559 - Realdo Colombo describes the circulation of blood through the lungs in detail
1603 - Girolamo Fabrici studies leg veins and notices that they have valves which allow blood to flow only toward the heart
1628 - William Harvey published An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
1651 - William Harvey concluded that all animals, including mammals, develop from eggs, and spontaneous generation of any animal from mud or excrement was an impossibility
1658 - Jan Swammerdam (Dutch) observed red blood cells under a microscope
1663 - Robert Hooke saw cells in cork using a microscope
1668 - Francesco Redi (Italian) disproved spontaneous generation by showing that fly maggots only appear on pieces of meat in jars if the jars are open to the air, jars covered with cheesecloth contained no flies
1672 - Marcello Malpighi (Italian) published the first description of chick development, including the formation of muscle somites, circulation, and nervous system
1676 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek (Dutch) observed protozoa and calls them animalcules
1677 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek observed spermatozoa
1683 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek observed bacteria Leeuwenhoek's discoveries renew the question of spontaneous generation in microorganisms
1688-1752 William Cheselden: Published "Anatomy of the Human Body" medical text, first surgical recovery from blindness
1701 - Giacomo Pylarini gives the first smallpox inoculations in Europe to the children of the English ambassador to Constantinople - they were widely practiced in the east before then (variolation)
1714 - 1789 Percivall Pott: the first scientist to demonstrate that a cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen
1720 - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: brought smallpox vaccination (variolation) to England
1728 - 1793 John Hunter (surgeon): advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine, collaborator with Edward Jenner,  smallpox vaccine
1736 - Claudius Aymand performs the first successful appendectomy
1744 - 1795 Pierre-Joseph Desault (French):  First surgical periodical
1747 - James Lind (Scottish) discovers that citrus fruits prevent scurvy
1767 - Kaspar Friedrich Wolff (German) argued that the tissues of a developing chick form from nothing and are not simply elaborations of already-present structures in the egg
1768 - Lazzaro Spallanzani (Italian) again disproved spontaneous generation by showing that no organisms grow in a rich broth if it is first heated (to kill any organisms) and allowed to cool in a stoppered flask - he also showed that fertilization in mammals requires an egg and semen
1771 - Joseph Priestley demonstrated that plants produce a gas that animals and flames consume - those two gases are carbon dioxide and oxygen
1796 - Edward Jenner develops a smallpox vaccination method
1798 - Thomas Malthus discussed human population growth and food production in An Essay on the Principle of Population
1799 - Humphry Davy discovers the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide
1801 - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (French) began the detailed study of invertebrate taxonomy
1809 - Lamarck proposed a modern theory of evolution based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics
1813 - 1883 James Marion Sims (American): Father of surgical gynecology
1816 - Rene Laennec invents the stethoscope
1817 - Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaime Caventou isolated chlorophyll
1818 - James Blundell performs the first successful human blood transfusion
1820 - Christian Friedrich Nasse (German) formulated Nasse's law: hemophilia occurs only in males and is passed on by unaffected females
1820-1910 - Florence Nightingale: Modern Nursing
1824 - J L Prevost and J B Dumas showed that the sperm in semen were not parasites, as previously thought, but, instead, the agents of fertilization
1826 - Karl von Baer showed that the eggs of mammals are in the ovaries, ending a 200-year search for the mammalian egg
1827 - 1912 Joseph Lister: Anti-septic surgery, Father of modern surgery
1828 - Friedrich Woehler synthesized urea; first synthesis of an organic compound from inorganic starting materials
1836 - Theodor Schwann discovered pepsin in extracts from the stomach lining; first isolation of an animal enzyme
1837 - Theodor Schwann showed that heating air will prevent it from causing putrefaction
1838 - Matthias Schleiden proposed that all plants are composed of cells
1839 - Theodor Schwann proposed that all animal tissues are composed of cells
1842 - Crawford Long (American) performs the first surgical operation using anesthesia with ether
1843 - Martin Barry reported the fusion of a sperm and an egg for rabbits in a 1-page paper
1849 - Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to gain a medical degree (received degree in USA)
1856 - Louis Pasteur (French) stated that microorganisms produce fermentation
1858 - Charles R Darwin and Alfred Wallace independently proposed a theory of biological evolution ("descent through modification") by means of natural selection Only in later editions of his works did Darwin used the term "evolution"
1858 - Rudolf Virchow proposed that cells can only arise from pre-existing cells; "Omnis cellula e celulla," all cell from cells - the Cell Theory states that all organisms are composed of cells (Schleiden and Schwann), and cells can only come from other cells (Virchow)
1864 - Louis Pasteur (French) disproved the spontaneous generation of cellular life
1865 - Gregor Mendel (Austrian) demonstrated in pea plants that inheritance follows definite rules The Principle of Segregation states that each organism has two genes per trait, which segregate when the organism makes eggs or sperm - the Principle of Independent Assortment states that each gene in a pair is distributed independently during the formation of eggs or sperm
1865 - Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz realized that benzene is composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms in a hexagonal ring
1869 - Friedrich Miescher (Swiss) discovered nucleic acids in the nuclei of cells
1870 - Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the germ theory of disease
1876 - Oskar Hertwig and Hermann Fol independently described (in sea urchin eggs) the entry of sperm into the egg and the subsequent fusion of the egg and sperm nuclei to form a single new nucleus
1879 - First vaccine for cholera
1881 - Louis Pasteur develops an anthrax vaccine
1882 - Louis Pasteur develops a rabies vaccine
1884 - Emil Fischer began his detailed analysis of the compositions and structures of sugars
1890 - Emil von Behring discovers antitoxins and uses them to develop tetanus and diphtheria vaccines
1892 - Hans Driesch separated the individual cells of a 2-cell sea urchin embryo and shows that each cell develops into a complete individual, thus disproving the theory of preformation and showing that each cell is "totipotent," containing all the hereditary information necessary to form an individual
1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovers medical use of X-rays in medical imaging
1897 - Aspirin is invented in Germany
1898 - Martinus Beijerinck used filtering experiments to show that tobacco mosaic disease is caused by something smaller than a bacterium, which he names a virus
1900 - Correns, deVries, and Tschermak independently rediscovered Mendel's paper on heredity
1901 - Karl Landsteiner discovers the existence of different human blood types
1901 - Alois Alzheimer identifies the first case of what becomes known as Alzheimer's disease
1902 - Walter Sutton (American) and Theodor Boveri (German), independently proposed that the chromosomes carry the hereditary information
1903 - Willem Einthoven discovers electrocardiography (ECG/EKG)
1905 - William Bateson coined the term "genetics" to describe the study of biological inheritance
1906 - Frederick Hopkins suggests the existence of vitamins and suggests that a lack of vitamins causes scurvy and rickets
1906 - Mikhail Tsvet discovered the chromatography technique for organic compound separation
1907 - Paul Ehrlich (German) develops a chemotherapeutic cure for sleeping sickness
1907 - Ivan Pavlov demonstrated conditioned responses with salivating dogs
1907 - Hermann Emil Fischer (German) artificially synthesized peptide amino acid chains and thereby shows that amino acids in proteins are connected by amino group-acid group bonds
1909 - Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word "gene"
1911 - Thomas Hunt Morgan (American) proposed that genes are arranged in a line on the chromosomes
1917 - Julius Wagner-Jauregg discovers the malarial fever shock therapy for general paresis of the insane
1921 - Edward Mellanby discovers vitamin D and shows that its absence causes rickets
1921 - Frederick Banting (Canadian) and Charles Best discover insulin - important for the treatment of diabetes
1922 - Aleksandr Oparin proposed that the Earth's early atmosphere contained methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor, and that these were the raw materials for the origin of life
1923 - First vaccine for Diphtheria
1926 - First vaccine for Pertussis
1926 - James B Sumner (American) showed that the urease enzyme is a protein
1927 - First vaccine for Tuberculosis
1927 - First vaccine for Tetanus
1928 - Otto Diels and Kurt Alder discovered the Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction for forming ring molecules
1928 - Alexander Fleming (Scottish) discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin
1929 - Phoebus Levene (American) discovered the sugar deoxyribose in nucleic acids
1929 - Hans Berger discovers human electroencephalography (EEG)
1929 - Edward Doisy and Adolf Butenandt independently discovered estrone (an estrogen)
1930 - John Howard Northrop (American) showed that the pepsin enzyme is a protein
1931 - Adolf Butenandt discovered androsterone
1932 - Hans Adolf Krebs discovered the urea cycle
1933 - Tadeus Reichstein artificially synthesized vitamin C; first vitamin synthesis
1935 - Rudolf Schoenheimer used deuterium as a tracer to examine the fat storage system of rats
1935 - Wendell Stanley (American) crystallized the tobacco mosaic virus
1935 - Konrad Lorenz described the imprinting behavior of young birds
1935 - First vaccine for Yellow Fever
1936 - Egas Moniz discovers prefrontal lobotomy for treating mental diseases
1936 - Enrique Finochietto develops the self-retaining thoracic retractor
1937 - Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin discovered the three-dimensional structure of cholesterol
1937 - Hans Adolf Krebs discovered the tricarboxylic acid cycle
1937 - Theodosius Dobzhansky applies the chromosome theory and population genetics to natural populations in the first mature work of neo-Darwinism, also called the modern synthesis, a term coined by Julian Huxley
1938 - Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovered a living coelacanth off the coast of southern Africa
1940 - Donald Griffin (American) and Robert Galambos announced their discovery of echolocation by bats
1942 - Max Delbruck and Salvador Luria demonstrated that bacterial resistance to virus infection is caused by random mutation and not adaptive change
1943 - Willem J Kolff build the first dialysis machine
1944 - Oswald Avery (American) shows that DNA carried the hereditary information in pneumococcus bacteria
1944 - Robert Burns Woodward (American) and William von Eggers Doering synthesized quinine
1945 - Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin discovered the three-dimensional structure of penicillin
1948 - Erwin Chargaff (American) showed 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 - The research group of Robert Robinson with John Cornforth publishes their synthesis of cholesterol, while Robert Woodward (Harvard University) publishes his synthesis of cortisone
1951 - Fred Sanger, Hans Tuppy, and Ted Thompson completed their chromatographic analysis of the insulin amino acid sequence
1952 - American developmental biologists Robert Briggs and Thomas King cloned the first vertebrate by transplanting nuclei from leopard frogs embryos into enucleated eggs - more differentiated cells were the less able they are to direct development in the enucleated egg
1952 - Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase (American) showed that DNA is the genetic material in bacteriophage viruses
1952 - Rosalind Franklin concluded that DNA is a double helix with a diameter of 2 nm and the sugar-phosphate backbones on the outside of the helix, based on x ray diffraction studies She suspected the two sugar-phosphate backbones have a peculiar relationship to each other
1952 - Jonas Salk develops the first polio vaccine (available in 1955)
1952 - Robert Briggs & Thomas King (Americans) clone frogs
1953 - John Heysham Gibbon: (American) invented Heart-Lung Machine
1953 - Inge Edler: Medical Ultrasonography
1953 - After examining Franklin's unpublished data, James D Watson (American) and Francis Crick published a double-helix structure for DNA, with one sugar-phosphate backbone running in the opposite direction to the other - they further suggested a mechanism by which the molecule can replicate itself and serve to transmit genetic information
1953 - Stanley Miller (American) showed that amino acids can be formed when simulated lightning is passed through vessels containing water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen
1954 - Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin discovered the three-dimensional structure of vitamin B12
1954 - Joseph Murray (American) performs the first human kidney transplant (on identical twins)
1955 - Marianne Grunberg-Manago and Severo Ochoa discovered the first nucleic-acid-synthesizing enzyme (polynucleotide phosphorylase), which links nucleotides together into polynucleotides
1955 - Arthur Kornberg (American) discovered DNA polymerase enzymes
1958 - John Gurdon used nuclear transplantation to clone an African Clawed Frog; first cloning of a vertebrate using a nucleus from a fully differentiated adult cell
1958 - Matthew Stanley Meselson and Franklin W. Stahl (American) proved that DNA replication is semiconservative in the Meselson-Stahl experiment
1958 - Rune Elmqvist: Pacemaker
1959 - Min Chueh Chang: In Vitro Fertilization
1959 - Max Perutz (born in Austria) comes up with a model for the structure of oxygenated hemoglobin
1960 - John Kendrew described the structure of myoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in muscle
1960 - S. Weiss, J. Hurwitz, Audrey Stevens and J. Bonner (Americans): discovered bacterial RNA polymerase, which polymerizes nucleotides under the direction of DNA
1960 - Robert Woodward (American) synthesized chlorophyll
1960 - Invention of Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)
1960 - First combined oral contraceptive approved by the FDA
1961 - J. Heinrich Matthaei cracked the first codon of the genetic code (the codon for the amino acid phenylalanine) using Grunberg-Manago's 1955 enzyme system for making polynucleotides
1961 - Joan Oro found that concentrated solutions of ammonium cyanide in water can produce the nucleotide adenine, a discovery that opened the way for theories on the origin of life
1962 - John Charnley: Hip Replacement pioneer
1962 - James W. Black: Beta Blockers to treat high blood pressure and other conditions
1962 - Sabin (American): First oral polio vaccine
1963 - Paul Winchell (American): Artificial heart
1963 - Thomas Starzl performs the first human liver transplant
1963 - James Hardy (American) performs the first human lung transplant
1966 - Genetic code fully cracked through trial-and-error experimental work
1966 - Kimishige Ishizaka discovered a new type of immunoglobulin, IgE, that develops allergy and explains the mechanisms of allergy at molecular and cellular levels
1966 - Lynn Margulis (American) proposed the endosymbiotic theory, that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells
1967 - Christiaan Barnard (South African) performs the first human heart transplant
1968 - Fred Sanger used radioactive phosphorus as a tracer to chromatographically decipher a 120 base long RNA sequence
1969 - Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin deciphered the three-dimensional structure of insulin
1969 - William House: Cochlear Implants
1970 - Cyclosporine, the first effective immunosuppressive drug is introduced in organ transplant practice
1971 - Genetically Modified Organisms
1971 - Raymond Vahan Damadian: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
1971 - Godfrey Hounsfield: Computed Tomography (CT or CAT Scan)
1970 - Hamilton Smith (American) and Daniel Nathans discovered DNA restriction enzymes
1970 - Howard Temin and David Baltimore (Americans) independently discovered reverse transcriptase enzymes
1972 - Dean Kamen: Insulin Pump
1972 - Albert Eschenmoser and Robert Woodward synthesized vitamin B12
1972 - Stephen Jay Gould  and Niles Eldredge (Americans) proposed an idea they call "punctuated equilibrium", which states that the fossil record is an accurate depiction of the pace of evolution, with long periods of "stasis" (little change) punctuated by brief periods of rapid change and species formation (within a lineage)
1972 - Seymour Jonathan Singer and Garth L Nicholson developed the fluid mosaic model, which deals with the make-up of the membrane of all cells
1973 - Mani Lal Bhaumik: Laser Eye Surgery
1974 - Giorgio Fischer (Italian): Liposuction
1978 - Last fatal case of smallpox[87]
1977 - John Corliss (American) and ten coauthors discovered chemosynthetically based animal communities located around submarine hydrothermal vents on the Galapagos Rift
1977 - Walter Gilbert (American0 and Allan Maxam present a rapid DNA sequencing technique which uses cloning, base destroying chemicals, and gel electrophoresis
1977 - Frederick Sanger and Alan Coulson presented a rapid gene sequencing technique which uses dideoxynucleotides and gel electrophoresis
1978 - Frederick Sanger presented the 5386 base sequence for the virus PhiX174; first sequencing of an entire genome
1982 - Stanley B Prusiner (American) proposed the existence of infectious proteins, or prions His idea is widely derided in the scientific community, but he wins a Nobel Prize in 1997
1982 - Recombinant DNA human insulin synthesized by Eli Lilly
1983 - Alfred G Gilman (American) and Martin Rodbell discover G-proteins
1983 - Kary Mullis (American) invented "PCR" ( polymerase chain reaction), an automated method for rapidly copying sequences of DNA
1984 - Alec Jeffreys devised a genetic fingerprinting method
1986 - Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of Nerve growth factor (NGF)
1989 - Stephen Fodor (American): first DNA microarray
1990 - French Anderson (American) et al performed the first approved gene therapy on a human patient
1990 - Napoli, Lemieux and Jorgensen discovered RNA interference (1990) during experiments aimed at the color of petunias
1995 - Publication of the first complete genome of a free-living organism
1996 - Dolly the sheep was first clone of an adult mammal
2001 - Publication of the first drafts of the complete human genome
2002 - First virus produced 'from scratch', an artificial polio virus that paralyzes and kills mice
2007 - Yamanaka and Yu make stem cells from skin cells
2012 - Organs from stem cells

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