Andrew Crosse

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Andrew Crosse (1784–1855) was a British amateur scientist who is famous mainly for supposedly creating insects with his electrical experiments.

Andrew Crosse was born on June 17, 1784. In 1836 he was living in Somerset where he had his own homemade laboratory in his home in the Quantock Hills. He was also a local representative in the British parliament.

One day in 1836, Crosse looked into a dish of chemicals in his laboratory. For the last two weeks he had been passing an electrical current through a chemical solution in an attempt to induce crystal formation. On the 26th day of the experiment he saw what he described as "the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail."

More creatures appeared and two days later they moved their legs. Over the next few weeks, hundreds more appeared. They crawled around the table and hid themselves when they could find a shelter. Crosse identified them as being part of genus acarus.

Crosse sent the results to the London Electrical Society. Otherwise, he told only a couple of people but rumors begun to spread. A local newspaper published an article about the "extraordinary experiment" and named the insects Acarus crossii.

Some of the people apparently gained the impression that Crosse had somehow "created" the insects or at least claimed to have done so. He received angry letters in which he was accused of blasphemy and trying to take God's place as a creator. Some of them included death threats. Local farmers blamed him for the blight of the wheat crop and commissioned an exorcism in the nearby hills.

Other scientists tried to repeat the experiment. William Henry Weeks took extensive measures to assure a sealed environment for his experiment by placing it inside a bell jar. He obtained the same results as Crosse, but due to the controversy that Crosse's experiment had sparked his work was never published. In February 1837 many newspapers reported that Michael Faraday had also replicated Crosse's results. However, this was not true. Faraday had not even attempted the experiment. Later researchers, such as Henry Noad and Alfred Smee, were unable to replicate Crosse's results.

Crosse did not claim that he created the insects; he instead assumed that there were embedded insect eggs in his samples. Later commentators agreed that the insects were probably cheese or dust mites that had contaminated Crosse's instruments.

An account of his experiment can be viewed here http://www.rexresearch.com/crosse/crosse.htm .From the pen of the man himself.