Spallanzani

Spallanzani Lazzaro (Lazzaro Spallanzani; 1722-99), Italian scientist, abbot, son of a lawyer, who first studied with the Jesuits and then at the university in Bologna, where his relative Laura Bassi was a professor of physics. He early showed his scientific inclinations and soon became professor first in Reggio, then in Pavia, where he enriched the museum with collections from his journey along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. S. was an inquisitive, persistent, and precise experimenter who conducted numerous experiments on respiration and digestion ("Dissertazioni di fisica animale e vegetale", v. I-II, Modena, 1780), fertilization and development of organisms ("Experiences pour servir a l'histoire de la generation des animaux et des plantes", Pavie, 1787). Through a series of excellent experiments, he proved that for the fertilization and development of frog eggs it is necessary for the seminal fluid to make contact, and thereby completely refuted the prevailing view that fertilization is effected by the "spirit" of the semen (aura seminalis); he was the first to successfully perform an experiment of artificial introduction of semen into the sexual organs of a dog and thereby visually demonstrated the material nature of the fertilization process. His experiments (1768) disproving the existence of spontaneous generation are also famous. In a polemic with Needham, a collaborator of Buffon, S., even before Pasteur, argued that microbes do not develop in various infusions if the latter were previously boiled and placed in sealed vessels.