Ignaz Semmelweis

December 27, 2022 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Pasteur, the French scientist whose scientific breakthroughs have saved millions of lives, and whose work on microbes sounded the death knell of the idea of spontaneous generation. On this episode of ID the Future, biologist Ann Gauger walks listeners through the triumphs, flaws, and tragedies in the life of this extraordinary individual. In the nineteenth century, it was widely believed that the spontaneous generation of life from non-life was common and unremarkable, since it was thought that spontaneous generation of worms, mold, and other life forms occurred all the time in rotting meat and dirty rags. Pasteur constructed an experiment demonstrating that these “spontaneously” arising worms and such Read More ›

Today’s ID the Future brings onto the show Scottish physician David Galloway, author of the recent book Design Dissected and former president of Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In his conversation with guest host and fellow physician/author Geoffrey Simmons, Galloway describes how he found himself in the evolution/design controversy and eventually presented his doubts about Darwin to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. In this first half of a two-part conversation, Galloway and Simmons briefly summarize the content of Design Dissected, and Galloway homes in on one section in particular where he tells the tragic story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth-century Hungarian physician who pioneered life-saving antiseptic procedures in hospitals, but whose ideas were Read More ›