<P> The following is a list of people who are considered a "father" or "mother" (or "founding father" or "founding mother") of a scientific field . Such people are generally regarded to have made the first significant contributions to and / or delineation of that field; they may also be seen as "a" rather than "the" father or mother of the field . Debate over who merits the title can be perennial . As regards science itself, the title has been bestowed on the ancient Greek philosophers Thales--who attempted to explain natural phenomena without recourse to mythology--and Democritus, the seminal atomist . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Th> Field </Th> <Th> Person / s considered "father" or "mother" </Th> <Th> Rationale </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Bacteriology </Td> <Td> Robert Koch / Ferdinand Cohn / Louis Pasteur </Td> <Td> First to produce precise, correct descriptions of bacteria . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Antonie van Leeuwenhoek </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Biogeography </Td> <Td> Alfred Russel Wallace </Td> <Td> "...Often described as the Father of Biogeography, Wallace shows the impact of human activity on the natural world ." </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Biology </Td> <Td> Aristotle </Td> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Ecology </Td> <Td> Carl Linnaeus / Ernst Haeckel / Eugenius Warming </Td> <Td> 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). </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Entomology </Td> <Td> Jan Swammerdam </Td> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Johan Christian Fabricius </Td> <Td> Fabricius described and published information on over 10,000 insects and refined Linnaeus's system of classification . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> William Kirby </Td> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Ethology </Td> <Td> Nikolaas Tinbergen Karl von Frisch Konrad Lorenz </Td> <Td> 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 . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> Evolution </Li> <Li> Natural selection </Li> </Ul> </Td> <Td> Charles Darwin </Td> <Td> On the Origin of Species (1859). </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Genetics </Td> <Td> Gregor Mendel </Td> <Td> For his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants, which forms the basis for Mendelian inheritance . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> William Bateson </Td> <Td> Proponent of Mendelism . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Ichthyology </Td> <Td> Peter Artedi </Td> <Td> "Far greater than either of these...was he who has been justly called the Father of Ichthyology, Petrus (Peter) Artedi (1705--35)." </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Lichenology </Td> <Td> Erik Acharius </Td> <Td> "Erik Acharius, the father of lichenology ..." </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Microbiology </Td> <Td> Antonie van Leeuwenhoek </Td> <Td> The first to microscopically observe micro-organisms in water and the first to see bacteria . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Molecular biology </Td> <Td> Linus Pauling </Td> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Molecular biophysics </Td> <Td> Gopalasamudram Narayana Iyer Ramachandran </Td> <Td> Founded the (world's first?) molecular biophysics unit (1970). </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Paleontology </Td> <Td> Leonardo da Vinci George Cuvier </Td> <Td> </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Parasitology </Td> <Td> Francesco Redi </Td> <Td> 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 . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Protozoology </Td> <Td> Antonie van Leeuwenhoek </Td> <Td> First to produce precise, correct descriptions of protozoa . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Taxonomy </Td> <Td> Carl Linnaeus </Td> <Td> Devised the system of naming living organisms that became universally accepted in the scientific world . </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> Virology </Td> <Td> Dmitry Ivanovsky Martinus Beijerinck </Td> <Td> The first men to discover viruses (1892). </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Th> Field </Th> <Th> Person / s considered "father" or "mother" </Th> <Th> Rationale </Th> </Tr>

Who is considered to be the father of genetics