Francisco Redi was born in  Arezzo on 18th of February 1627 and died from an apoplectic stroke in Pisa in 1697. He was the son of a doctor who worked for the Grand Duke of Tuscany and had eight sons, four boys and five girls.

After he has attended the Jesuitical schools in Florence, in the 1647 he graduated in Philosophy and Medicine in Pisa. From 1650 to 1654 he lived in Rome, guest of the Cardinal Column, where he could deepen his competences in humanistic and scientific field. Then he went to Florence, by the court of the Medici, where he studied the most important European languages (French, German, English and Spanish).

Redi was a man of letters and a poet. He was a member of the “ Crusca Academy”, where he collaborated to the drawing up of the Dictionary, and  a member of the Academy of the Arcadia, where he carried his experience not only as man of letters but also as naturalist. He always paid attention to the real facts. Redi was a great scientific investigator too and all around Europe famous doctor .
He was also one of the most important members of the Cimento Academy, that reunited the Galileo Galilei's disciples for studying the natural phenomena. He wrote many treatises, among them the most famous are "The observations about the viper", " The experiences about  the generation of the bugs", " The experiences about various natural things, and particularly the Indian ones" and "The observations about the living animals who are found in the living animals".
When his father died, he became first doctor of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

DID REDI HAVE A SCIENTIFIC MENTALITY OR WAS HE SUPERSTITIOUS?

One of the main merits of Redi was that he remained always faithful to the truth and to the facts, in scientific field as well in literary field. He always tried to take away his job from the superstitions and the religious principles, that were often in strong contrast with the scientific search, as the experience of Galileo Galilei demonstrates. All his scientific studies are based on experience, that he carried with his own risk, as it happened when he drank the viper poison in order to demonstrate that it would have been mortal if it had been injected in the blood, but it would have been innocuous if it had been drunk.

His most famous experiment was the demonstration of the falsehood of the abiogenesis theory.

Redi used his scientific mentality also in literary field; for example, in the drawing up of the Dictionary of Crusca, he not only accepted the words used from the greatest writers of the 1300's, but also those used in the common speech by the learned men of his century.

But in his private life, and especially in the last years of his life, Redi was as superstitious as all the men of his time. When his health began to get worse, he tryed magical practices to cure himself, such as greasing himself with holy oils or touching ribbons that had been in conctact with the Saint Ranieri's bones.