Category: History of biology
-
A vivid, 273-year-old description of a famous ciliate
(And another funny description of a creature that, probably, doesn’t exist.) Both I discovered in the excellent A manual of the Infusoria, by English biologist William Saville-Kent, published in 1882. “Infusoria” was a term used at the time to encompass virtually all protozoans (that is, anything flagellate, ciliate or “tentaculiferous”) observed in water. From what…
Written by
-
Prokaryote/Eukaryote
Where we explore the relatively young history of a fundamental divide in the tree of Life. A deliberately short history of systematics Systematics is the science of classifying life forms. As with almost anything in science, the first traceable attempts at classifying life date back to Aristotle. In his treaty The History of Animals (4th…
Written by
-
Dead gods
Following is an extract from André Lwoff‘s lecture “The Concept of Virus“, given before the Society for General Microbiology on April 15th, 1957. I attempted to translate it into French just after. If you want to read the entire lecture (which I can only recommend), you can access it here : The Concept of Virus…
Written by
Phycoplankton 