Redi, Francesco (fränchās`kō rā`dē), 1626?–1698?, Italian naturalist, poet, philologist, and court physician to the dukes of Tuscany. Through controlled experiments he demonstrated that certain living organisms, notably maggots in rotting meat, did not arise, as had been alleged, through spontaneous generation. His Generation of Insects (1668, tr. 1909) is included in the nine-octavo edition (1809–11) of his complete writings. His chief poetical work was the dithyrambic ode Bacchus in Tuscany (1685; tr. by Leigh Hunt 1825).

Redi, Francesco

(born Feb. 19, 1626, Arezzo, Italy—died March 1, 1697, Pisa) Italian physician and poet. While working as physician to the dukes of Tuscany, he demonstrated in 1668, in one of the first biological experiments with proper controls, that the presence of maggots in rotting meat does not result from spontaneous generation. Redi set up a series of flasks containing different meats; half were sealed, half open. He repeated the experiment, replacing the sealed flasks with gauze-covered flasks. Though the meat in all the flasks rotted, Redi found that only in the uncovered flasks, which flies had entered freely, did the meat contain maggots. As a poet, he is known chiefly for his “Bacco in Toscana” (1685).