JOHN NEEDHAM: BIOGRAPHY AND EXPERIMENTS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

John Needham (1713–1781) was an English naturalist, biologist, and priest, best known for being the proponent of the spontaneous generation theory and for being the first clergyman to become a member of the Royal Society of London in 1768.

Needham's most important contributions to science were his early observations of plant pollen, his observations on squid organs, and the classical experiment to determine whether spontaneous generation occurs at the microscopic level.

On the other hand, he was particularly recognized for his dispute with the French philosopher Voltaire about miracles, and for a supposedly Egyptian statue-based linguistic theory of the chronology of the Bible.

Despite his failure to assert the existence of spontaneous generation, his contributions were useful to other biologists who did manage to explain the theory; Furthermore, their contributions influenced the explanation of the cell theory.

Biography

Early life and first activities

John Turberville Needham was born on September 10, 1713, in London, England. He was one of four children of attorney John Needham and Margaret Lucas. His father died when he was little.

Needham received his early religious education in French Flanders, France, which was influential for his intellectual life. According to some references, he studied at the English College in Douai, in northern France, between the years 1722 and 1736. From 1736, Needham devoted himself to teaching at a university in Cambrai, France.

In 1738, he was ordained a secular priest and remained first as a teacher and then set out to accompany young English Catholic nobles on the grand tour. During that year, he spent time reading about microscopic animals, which sparked a great interest in the natural sciences.

Then, in 1740, he moved to England and took the post of a teacher's assistant at a Catholic school near Twyford, Winchester.

He moved to Lisbon, Portugal, to teach; during his stay in Portugal he managed to carry out his first investigations. In particular, he worked with the squid's organs. For health reasons, he had to move again to England, in 1745.

Career path

While at Twyford, he made his microscopic observations of contaminated wheat, these being, along with squid investigations, the subjects of his early work.

It is inferred that by 1745, Needham's microscopic observations were published in one of his first works dealing with accounts of microscopic discoveries.

In 1748, at the invitation of the French naturalist Buffon, Needham examined fluids extracted from the reproductive organs of animals and infusions from plants and animal tissues.

Both Buffon and Needham made different observations, the results of which revealed the presence of globules under their microscopes, which Buffon called "organic molecules." Thanks to these discoveries Needham was recognized as an empirical scientist.

That same year (1748), he carried out his famous experiment with lamb broth and his study of animal composition; a year later, after further detailed studies, he managed to publish the work entitled Observations on the generation, composition and decomposition of animal and plant substances.

Finally, in 1750 he presented his theory of spontaneous generation and attempted to offer scientific evidence to support it.

Voltaire's criticism of John Needham

One of John Needham's harshest critics was the French philosopher François-Marie Aroue, better known as Voltaire. From about the time Needham first explained his beliefs, Voltaire immediately went against his theories.

Voltaire believed that Needham's idea could support atheism, materialism, and could generate controversy for the time. Their criticisms came after Needham, through his observations, suggested that small microscopic animals could be created spontaneously in a sealed container.

Last years

In 1751, Needham again became tutor to several young Catholics on their great tours of Europe; his travels included France, Switzerland, and Italy. The youths had to be accompanied by a clergyman; role assumed by Needham.

In 1768 he settled in Brussels as director of what later became the Royal Academy of Belgium. His scientific interests were motivated in large part by his desire to defend religion at a time when biological questions had serious theological and philosophical significance.

That same year, he was elected a member of the prestigious Royal Society of London; one of the oldest scientific societies in the UK and became the first Catholic priest to receive such an appointment.

Death

He held this position until 1780. A year later, in 1781, John Needham died on December 30, at the age of 68. There are no references to the reason or cause of his death.

Experiments

First experiments and contributions

In the year 1740, John Needham conducted several experiments with pollen in water. Through these observations, he was able to demonstrate the mechanics of pollen through the use of its papillae.

In addition, it showed that water could reactivate inactive or apparently dead microorganisms, as is the case with tardigrades. The name "tardigrades" was later placed by Spallanzani, Needham was the one who gave the first clues to the presence of these microorganisms.

While John Needham's research appeared contrary to the cell theory, it did help provide inadvertent support for the theory. Scientific advance is not simply a collection of successful experiments; sometimes notable accomplishments stem from acknowledging others who went wrong. This was Needham's role in the development of the cell theory.

Application of the experiment for spontaneous generation

Around the year 1745, Needham carried out his first experiments; from there, he reacted to his theory of spontaneous generation. First, he conducted the experiments with lamb broth and later with contaminated wheat in containers.

The experiments consisted of briefly boiling a mixture of lamb broth and then cooling the mixture in an open container to room temperature. Subsequently, he sealed the jars and, after a few days, observed the presence of microbes.

Needham established from his observations that microorganisms do not grow from eggs. He most strongly defended the theory of spontaneous generation according to which living organisms develop from "non-living" matter at the microscopic level.

According to Needham, this experiment managed to show that there was a vital force that produced a spontaneous generation; from there the English biologist strongly defended his own theory of abiogenesis and the origin of life.

Needham's theory of spontaneous generation

In the year 1750, Needham succeeded in establishing his own theory of spontaneous generation, differing from Buffon in his combinations of random denial of mathematically countable genetic traits.

Furthermore, he challenged the findings of the Italian naturalist Francesco Redi, who in 1668 had designed a scientific experiment to test spontaneous creation. After his results, he thought that insects could not be born from pollution, doubting the theory of spontaneous generation.

In this sense, Needham believed in the tradition of Aristotle and Descartes, only that he created his own spontaneous generation or the so-called "epigenesis".

According to Needham the embryo develops from an egg that has not differentiated; that is, there is no existence of any organ or structure, but on the contrary, the embryo's organs are formed from nothing or through interaction with the environment.

Results of the experiment for spontaneous generation

Building on the experiments of John Needham, a few years later, Spallanzani designed a series of experiments in order to discuss Needham's experiments.

After looking at the microorganisms found in the broth after opening the container, Needham believed that these results showed that life arises from non-living matter.

The experiments on spontaneous generation were not completed, because in 1765, Spallanzani boiled the same hermetically sealed lamb sauce and after opening the jars he did not find the microorganisms that Needham had found at the time.

The explanation the scientists managed to decipher was that Needham's sterilization technique had been flawed; the boiling time of his experiment was not long enough to kill all the microbes in the broth.

Another observation that was made later is that Needham had left the containers open while cooling. Exposure to the air may have caused microbial contamination of the lamb broth.

Debate on the theory of spontaneous generation

The debate on spontaneous generation continued until the early 19th century, with the French chemist Louis Pasteur. Pasteur responded to the claims of Needham and Spallanzani in their experiment.

The Paris Academy of Sciences offered a prize for solving the problem on the theory of spontaneous generation, so Pasteur, who had been studying microbial fermentation, accepted the challenge.

Pasteur used two gooseneck jars into which he poured equal amounts of meat broth and brought them to a boil in order to eliminate the microorganisms present in the broth.

The "S" shape of the bottle served so that air could enter and microorganisms stayed in the lower part of the tube. After a while, he observed that none of the broths had microorganisms present.

Pasteur managed to explain that, by using a longer boiling period, Spallanzani had destroyed something in the air responsible for life, which Needham had failed to do in his experiment.

References

1. John Needham, Encyclopedia Britannica Editors, (nd). Taken from britannica.com
2. John Needham, Wikipedia in English, (nd). Taken from wikipedia.org
3. John Needham, Famous Scientists Portal, (nd). Taken from famousscientists.org
4. Needham, Turberville John, Portal Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, (nd). Taken from encyclopedia.com
5. John Needham: Biography, Experiments and Cell Theory, Shelly Watkins, (nd). Taken from study.com