Browse Items (1664 total)

Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus identified the three kingdoms of nature (stones, plants and animals) in his Systema Naturae (1735). Each kingdom was subdivided into classes, orders, genera, species, and varieties. Linnaeus identified six classes of…

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and many viruses. Most DNA forms two strands that wrap around each other to form a double helix.…

French philosopher, mathematician and writer René Descartes has been called the father of modern philosophy. His Principia Philosophiae, first published in 1644, put forth the theory that the universe operated as a continuously running machine which…

Erasmus Darwin was a British physician, scientist, inventor and poet who originated the ideas of natural selection and photosynthesis. He published Zoonomia after 20 years of remaining silent due to public censure. His grandson Charles would further…

British photographer Edweard Muybridge pioneered work on animal locomotion using multiple cameras to capture motion in still photographs. After success as a photographer of the American West, Muybridge was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania…

The optical microscope first appeared in the 1590s, but the use of microscopes for research did not gain acceptance until the 1660s. It was then that English natural philosopher Robert Hooke began an extended set of experiments with the microscope on…

Buffon's Histoire Naturelle was an undertaking on the scale of Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopedie. In this “Table of the Order of Dogs," Buffon presents his definition of species (against that of Linnaeus!) as beings defined by time, environment,…

This 1530 map of Paris depicts key edifices of the French capital and its distinctive topographic features. Printer and cartographer Albert Jouvin Rochefort (c. 1540- c. 1710) included the map in his nine-panel 1672 district map of Paris. Rochefort's…