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'Francesco Redi' (February 18/19, 1626–March 1, 1697) was an Italian physician.
Born in Arezzo, Tuscany, he is most well-known for his experiment in 1668 which is regarded as one of the first steps in refuting "spontaneous generation" - a theory also known as Aristotelian abiogenesis. At the time, prevailing wisdom was that maggots formed naturally from rotting meat. In the experiment, Redi took three jars and put meat in each. He tightly sealed one, left one open, and covered the top of another with gauze. He waited for several days, and saw that maggots appeared on the meat in the open jar, on which flies had been able to land, but not in the sealed one or the gauze-covered one, on which no flies had been able to land.
He continued his experiments by capturing the maggots and waiting for them to metamorphose, which they did, becoming common flies. Also, when dead flies or maggots were put in sealed jars with meat, no maggots appeared, but when the same thing was done with living flies, maggots did appear.
Redi was also a poet, his best known work being ''Bacchus in Tuscany''.
A crater on Mars was named in his honor.

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External links

External links

★ Francesco Redi entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia

★ [http://dz-srv1.sub.uni-goettingen.de/cache/toc/D265536.html ''Esperienze intorno