John Needham
John Turberville Needham (* September 10, 1713 in London, † December 30, 1781 in Brussels ) was a Roman Catholic priest and English naturalist.
Life and work
He was the eldest son of the lawyer John Needham and his wife Margaret Lucas Needham. He attended since October 10, 1722, the Catholic College in Douai, Collège catholique anglais de Douai and then in 1738 the seminary in Cambrai. On March 8, 1731, he received his tonsure and was ordained in Arras, Cambrai on 31 May 1738 priest.
Then, in 1740, he went back to England, where he worked in a managerial capacity at a college in Twyford in Hampshire, catholic school for youth at Twyford. From 1744 on he lived for 15 months in Lisbon, where he taught philosophy at an English college. Needham had always been interested in natural sciences, he spent the following years partly in London and partly in Paris and made important microscopic observations, which he described in 1749 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. In 1751, Needham traveled abroad and worked as a tutor to the Earl of Fingall, and Mr. Howard of Corbie. Then he accompanied Lord Gormanston and Mr. Towneley in the same function, and finally Charles Dillon, eldest son of Henry Dillon, 11th Viscount Dillon ( 1705-1787 ) with whom he spent five years in France and Italy ( 1762-1767 ). At the end of this journey, he returned to Paris and was elected on 26 March 1768 a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in London.
John Needham founded in Brussels in 1773, the Académie royale des Sciences et impériale et Belles Lettres de Bruxelles on which he served as director until 1780. He was appointed in 1768 as a member of the Royal Society in London. With Georges- Louis Leclerc de Buffon in 1748 led by microscopic investigations. The government appointed him a canon in the collegiate church of Dendermonde, collegiate church of Dendermonde later on November 29, 1773, he became a canon in the collegiate and royal church of Soignies in Hainaut, collegiate and royal church of Soignies in Hainaut. In addition, he was on September 19, 1771 as a member of the Real Sociedad de Amigos del País Bascongada in Vitoria -Gasteiz, Spain, on 10 October 1779 of the Société Libre d' emulation de Liège on 28 July 1781 by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland elected. The experiments and hypothesis Needhams on the spontaneous origin of life were included by the French philosopher and enlightener Paul-Henri Thiry d' Holbach in his thoughts for his work System of Nature.
He died in Brussels on December 30, 1781 and was buried in the vaults of the Abbey of Coudenberg.
In his book Observations upon the Generation, Composition, and Decomposition of Animal and Vegetable Substances (1748 ) he tried to present a theory of spontaneous generation of life. This vitalistic theory he opposed views which would describe life processes solely with the help of physical and chemical laws.
Writings (selection )
- Observations upon the Generation, Composition, and Decomposition of Animal and Vegetable Substances. In 1748.
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. In 1749.
- New microscopical discoveries. 1745.