Pasteur, Louis

Louis Pasteur's discoveries buried the idea that inanimate substances could give rise to life.

As a result of lengthy research and experiments, the famous French biologist Louis Pasteur concluded that: "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment."179

Proponents of the theory of evolution long resisted Pasteur's findings. However, as scientific advances revealed the complex structure of the living cell, their claim that life could form spontaneously found itself in an ever- deeper impasse.

179. Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose, Molecular Evolution and The Origin of Life, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1972, p. 4.