Useful web sites for further research:

There are many fine web sites on spontaneous generation and on the scientists who have studied it.  The sites given below are good places to start.  If you look further be careful to check the source you are using.  Many sites are written from a creationist perspective.  A few of these offer balanced comments but many are based on inaccurate, unverifiable evidence.

These sites provide some general information:

A glossary of terms and information about the experiments that were carried out

A summary of the experiments

An historical overview of the quest to disprove the theory of spontaneous generation  

A detailed history of the spontaneous generation debate

A reexamination of the historical evidence on this debate by James E. Strick (pdf)

These sites provide biographical information about individual scientists:

  Redi              Buffon            Needham               Spallanzani   Leeuwenhoek    Schwann  

There are many sites on Louis Pasteur.  These are good places to start:

A relatively brief overview of his work

 ‘Reflections on my life’

These sites provide information about current work:

Current models of the origin of life

The Origin of Life: Abiotic Synthesis of Organic Molecules – a summary of the two theories

Abiotic Production of Organic Molecules  (NASAs web site for the origin of life)

For these sites from the New Scientist you might need to use: username giles, password barry

How does life get started? Where might we look for alien organisms? Paul Davies’s new take on the great unsolved questions in biology

Alive! The race to create life from scratch

The bluffer's guide to life