Field Person / s considered "father '' or "mother '' Rationale Bacteriology Robert Koch / Ferdinand Cohn / Louis Pasteur First to produce precise, correct descriptions of bacteria. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Biogeography Alfred Russel Wallace "... Often described as the Father of Biogeography, Wallace shows the impact of human activity on the natural world. '' Biology Aristotle Ecology Carl Linnaeus / Ernst Haeckel / Eugenius Warming Linnaeus founded an early branch of ecology that he called The Economy of Nature (1772), Haeckel coined the term "ecology '' (German: Oekologie, Ökologie) (1866), Warming authored the first book on plant ecology. Plantesamfund (1895). Entomology Jan Swammerdam Johan Christian Fabricius Fabricius described and published information on over 10,000 insects and refined Linnaeus 's system of classification. William Kirby Ethology Nikolaas Tinbergen Karl von Frisch Konrad Lorenz The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, joint awardees of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Evolution Natural selection Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species (1859). Genetics Gregor Mendel For his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants, which forms the basis for Mendelian inheritance. William Bateson Proponent of Mendelism. Ichthyology Peter Artedi "Far greater than either of these... was he who has been justly called the Father of Ichthyology, Petrus (Peter) Artedi (1705 -- 35). '' Lichenology Erik Acharius "Erik Acharius, the father of lichenology... '' Microbiology Antonie van Leeuwenhoek The first to microscopically observe micro-organisms in water and the first to see bacteria. Molecular biology Linus Pauling Molecular biophysics Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran Founded the (world 's first?) molecular biophysics unit (1970). Paleontology Leonardo da Vinci George Cuvier Parasitology Francesco Redi The founder of experimental biology and the first person to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies. Protozoology Antonie van Leeuwenhoek First to produce precise, correct descriptions of protozoa. Taxonomy Carl Linnaeus Devised the system of naming living organisms that became universally accepted in the scientific world. Virology Dmitry Ivanovsky Martinus Beijerinck The first men to discover viruses (1892).
who is considered to be the father of genetics
Gregor Mendel William Bateson