The bicentennial of a forgotten giant: Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799).

Two centuries ago Lazzaro Spallanzani (Fig. 1), a true precursor of modern biology and one of the “founding fathers” of microbiology, died. In general, he is comparatively less known than other great scientists. However, we have to recognize today that many aspects of our current scientific culture are based in his inspiration. This Italian, born in Modena, was a follower of the great naturalist Antonio Vallisnieri (1661–1730) and attended lectures by the famous Laura Bassi (1711–1778), who, in spite of her sex, was a full professor at the University of Bologna in the middle of the eighteenth century. This extraordinary woman—who spoke several languages, possessed an unusual knowledge of mathematics, physics and natural sciences, and still had time to bear twelve children—inspired the scientific vocation of the young Spallanzani. Triggered by these stimuli, Spallanzani became professor of natural history at the Universities of Modena and Pavia and later a researcher renowned throughout Europe by the multiplicity and curiosity of his observations. Since he was ordained by the Roman Catholic Church, he is also known by the nickname of abate Spallanzani. Spallanzani’s classic studies on the impossibility of spontaneous generation of life from dead matter contributed to the setting up of techniques on sterilization later perfected by Louis Pasteur [1, 2, 4]. Pasteur, acknowledging the importance of these studies, hung Spallanzani’s portrait in one of the halls of his Institute at Paris. Furthermore, the versatility of Spallanzani’s research contributed quite efficiently to the progress of physiology in areas as diverse as blood circulation, breathing and digestion [2, 3]. Among his many scientific achievements, the most outstanding discoveries are by far the various contributions included in his book Experiences to Serve to the History of the Generation of Animals and Plants, which was first published in Genova, in Italian, in 1786 [6]. The experiences described are of great interest, particularly when analyzed in the light of modern techniques such as cloning or in vitro fertilization. Among other accomplishments, these studies report the first experimental evidence that ovules are fertilized by spermatozoa. However, as scientists in all ages, Spallanzani was not immune to error. Prisoner in part of Aristotle’s ideas, he favored some wrong interpretations of the pre-formationist theory, which supported the pre-existence of the embryo before fertilization and assumed a sole animistic role for the spermatic fluid [5]. Nevertheless, we owe to Spallanzani the first studies on reproduction which can be considered really modern. By means of artificial fecundations in various animals, Spallanzani was able to obtain embryos which “were born just as if mating had preceded their life” [6]. On these bases, he Mariano Gacto