Francesco Redi

Francesco Redi (1626 to 1697) was an Italian physician, naturalist, biologist and poet, remembered as a founder of experimental biology and as the father of modern parasitology. He took doctorates in medicine and philosophy at the University of Pisa at the age of 21 and went on to work in several Italian cities. A rationalist who set himself against popular myths, he is best known for challenging the theory of spontaneous generation, showing that maggots come from the eggs of flies. His experiments are set out in his major work of 1668, Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl'insetti. He also tested beliefs about vipers, showing that snake venom comes from the fangs rather than the gallbladder and is not poisonous when swallowed, and he was the first to recognize and describe about 180 parasites, among them Fasciola hepatica and Ascaris lumbricoides. He may have originated the use of the control in experimental design, and his verse collection Bacco in Toscana of 1685 is counted among the finest Italian poetry of the seventeenth century.