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Multiple Choice Questions · Q1

Q.Who proposed that the first form of life could have come from pre-existing non-living organic molecules?

(a) Alfred Wallace
(b) Oparin and Haldane
(c) Charles Darwin
(d) Louis Pasteur
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Oparin (1924) and Haldane (1929) independently proposed that the first life arose through chemical evolution from pre-existing non-living organic molecules.

Step 1. Alfred Wallace co-proposed natural selection alongside Darwin, but this concerns how already-existing life diversifies, not how the first life arose from non-living matter.

Step 2. Charles Darwin's theory likewise explains the descent and modification of already-living organisms, not the chemical origin of the first living matter.

Step 3. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation — he showed that already-complex organisms (microbes, flies) do not arise directly from non-living broth or meat — but he did not put forward a positive theory of how the first life actually originated.

Step 4. Alexander I. Oparin (1924) and, independently, J. B. S. Haldane (1929) proposed that the first form of life arose through a stepwise chemical evolution, in which non-living organic molecules formed in Earth's primitive atmosphere and ocean gradually assembled into protobionts and finally into the first true cell.

✓Final answer

(b) Oparin and Haldane

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