Francesco Redi

Who was Francesco Redi?

Francesco Redi was an Italian physician, naturalist, and poet. He was the first scientist to challenge the theories of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies. He was also the first to recognize and correctly describe details of many important parasites, and for this reason, as many historians and scientists claim, he may rightly be called the father of modern parasitology, and also regarded as the founder of experimental biology.