Aristotle

Aristotle is properly recognized as the originator of the scientific study of life, studying it both systematically and empirically. His Historia Animalium, which makes up roughly a quarter of his surviving writings, organized differences among animals across four categories: parts, activities, ways of life and character traits, and rejected simple either-or classification in favor of grouping animals by clusters of shared, stable traits. There was nothing of comparable scope or sophistication again until the sixteenth century. The anatomist Richard Owen later wrote that zoological science sprang from Aristotle's labors like Minerva from the head of Jove, in a state of noble and splendid maturity. Aristotle lived from 384 to 322 BCE and studied and later taught at his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens.