Who coined the term "panspermia?" Please provide reference. Before
Svante Arrhenius, John Tyndall used the term, but I think he was not
the first.

The scientific usage of the term can be traced back to the Ionian
Greek philosopher Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, circa 450 B.C./B.C.E.


Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2377553

panspermia , hê, mixture of all seeds (cf. panospria),
Arist.GA769a29,b2, Sosib. 20, Luc.Herm.61, Alciphr.3.14, Gp.15.8.2:
metaph., p. muthôn Plu.2.348a .

            II. of the mixture of elements, in the systems of
Anaxagoras and the atomists, hôs ousan tên phusin hoion p. pantôn tôn
stoicheiôn Arist.Cael.303a16 , cf. GC314a29, Ph.203a21; p. panti
thnêtôi genei mêchanômenos Pl.Ti.73c ; pathôn p. tis ho thumos
Plu.2.463a .


Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities
(1898)
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aid%3Danaxagoras
 
Anaxagoras

"(Anaxagoras). A Greek philosopher, of Clazomenae in Asia Minor, born
about B.C. 500."
[...]
"He laid down his doctrine in a work “On Nature” in the Ionic dialect,
of which only fragments are preserved. Like Parmenides, he denied the
existence of birth or death; the two processes were rather to be
described as a mingling and unmingling. The ultimate elements of
combination are indivisible, imperishable primordia of infinite
number, and differing in shape, colour, and taste, called by himself
“seeds of things,” and by later writers (from an expression of
Aristotle) homoiomereia, i. e. particles of like kind with each other
and with the whole that is made up of them."



Biography of Anaxagoras by Diogenes Laertius

THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS,
TRANSLATED BY C.D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANAXAGORAS
dlanaxagoras.htm
http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlanaxagoras.htm

"He asserted that the sun was a mass of burning iron, greater than
Peloponnesus; (but some attribute this doctrine to Tantalus), and that
the moon contained houses, and also hills and ravines: and that the
primary elements of everything were similarities of parts; for as we
say that gold consists of a quantity of grains combined together, so
too is the universe formed of a number of small bodies of similar
parts."


Anaxagoras.html
http://www.drury.edu/ess/history/ancient/Anaxagoras.html

"If we take a thing and divide it, we will not come up with the
Empedoclean roots - we will find the _homoiomereiai_. In the smallest
part of everything there are minute parts of all other things.
_Panspermia _- everything contains seeds of all other things."



Google cache
*Anaxagoras* of Clazomenae: Discussion
*John Burnet*
://www.google.com/search?q=cache:MobXxUR4rCkJ:plato.evansville.edu/public/burnet/ch6b.htm+Anaxagoras+panspermia&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

"*128. "Everything in Everything"*
[...]
"The statement that there is a portion of everything in everything, is
not to be understood as referring simply to the original mixture of
things before the formation of the worlds (fr. 1). On the contrary,
even now "all things are together," and everything, however small and
however great, has an equal number of "portions" (fr. 6). A smaller
particle of matter could only contain a smaller number of portions, if
one of those portions ceased to be; but if anything is, in the full
Parmenidean sense, it is impossible that mere division should make it
cease to be (fr. 3). Matter is infinitely divisible; for there is no
least thing, any more than there is a greatest. But however great or
small a body may be, it contains just the same number of "portions,"
that is, a portion of everything."
[...]
"Though everything has a portion of everything in it, things appear to
be that of which there is most in them (fr. 12 /sub fin/.). We may
say, then, that Air is that in which there is most cold, Fire that in
which there is most heat, and so on, without giving up the view that
there is a portion of cold in the fire and a portion of heat in the
air. The great masses which Empedocles
<http://plato.evansville.edu/bin/search.cgi?q=Empedocles&topic=|> had
taken for elements are really vast collections of all manner of
"seeds." Each of them is, in fact, a /*panspermia*/.

*131. "All Things Together"*

From all this it follows that, when "all things were together," and
when the different seeds of things were mixed together in infinitely
small particles (fr. 1), the appearance presented would be that of one
of what had hitherto been regarded as the primary substances."



The term is first noted in English in 1690, according the Oxford
English Dictionary, in the form *panspermatic*, appearing in William
Leybourn's Cursus Mathematicus.

OED
"445b To the end that it [the Solar Ocean] might most effectually
communicate its Panspermatick virtue to all those bodies to which it
is to afford Light and Influence."


Cursus Mathematicus - LEYBOURN, William
http://www.rarevols.co.uk/pages/00002590.htm


SEARCH TERMS

://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Anaxagoras+panspermia
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Leybourn+William

hlabadie-ga

According to the OED the term first appears in Robley Dunglison's
Medical Lexicon from 1842.  Info on Robley Dunglison can be found at:
http://jeffline.tju.edu/SML/archives/collections/finding_aids/dunglison.html
Found no evidence that he coineed the term.

-blinkwilliams-ga

The original use of the word appears to signify a ritual food in
Ancient Greece:

" the Anthesteria, an important Dionysian festival. In it the "bloody
sacrifice" takes the form of sacramental drinking of wine, and
restitution takes the form of a sacred marriage, in which the victim
(Sacrificed God) is appeased by being given a woman (the queen) and is
revitalized by her embrace. ...  As is common in rites of restitution
after the sacrifice, the people enjoy a panspermia (boiled whole
vegetables and grains), since it requires no "aggressive" acts
(killing or grinding)."
From A Review of Walter Burkert's Homo Necans  The Anthropology of
Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth  by John Opsopaus
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/HNR.html

"Another religious cult which has retained an unbroken continuity from
ancient Greek times through the Byzantine era to the present is the
offering of panspermia, or pankarpia, which in Greek religion was a
mixture of several kinds of fruit offered to the dead on the third
day, called Chytroi, of the Anthesteria or Dionysia. Én Christian
Byzantium panspermia was transformed into the offering of kollyba,
boiled wheat, distributed to the congregation on certain memorial days
and on the day of a funeral as well as on the third, ninth, and
fortieth days after death."
From Myriobiblos (On Line Library of the Church of Greece)
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/constantelos_ab.html

Thanks for the rating.

hlabadie-ga

hlabadie --
may I post your answer on the "replies" section of my website about panspermia:
http://www.panspermia.org     ??

I believe that a link to the Answer would be the proper method to
reference it on your website.

You could quote it sparingly with the link to the full Answer, as
Google Answers has rights to the content.

You might want to address an e-mail request for permission to:

answers-editors@google.com 

hlabadie-ga

I believe Francis Crick of DNA fame used the term Panspermia to refer
to the theory that life originated elsewhere in the universe and came
to earth, like grass seeds drifting through the wind and landing in a
far-away lawn.

Some science fiction writers have extended that theory to, we are the
germs left behind in the garbage that was a space traveller's lunch.

If Panspermia were true, then there should be life elsewhere in the
universe, but given the anthropic principle, they may not be
recognizable to us, nor us them.