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Hans and Zacharias Jansen
Invented the first microscope. -
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke invented a microscope and was the first person to see cells - he was studying a sliver of cork - and saw tiny individual compartments in the tissue. However, he only saw the walls due to the tissue being dead. -
Francesca Redi
Francesca Redi disproved the theory of spontaneous generation by experimenting with pieces of rotting meat: one half the flies could get to, and the other half that they could not. Maggots spawned only on the meat the flies had touched, thereby disproving the long-held belief. -
Anton Van Leeuwenhoek
Saw the first living cells in pond water with a miscroscope he made lenses for. -
Anton Van Leeuwenhoek
The first bacteria and protozoa were viewed, described and drawn. -
John Needham
Tried to disprove Redi's proof by placing broth in a bottle, heating it to kill anything inside, and then sealing it. Days later, the broth had micro-organisms, but in truth he had not heated it for long enough to kill everything inside. -
Lazzaro Spallanzani
Furthered John Needham's experiments and discovered that broth in a sealed bottle with sterile, but when exposed to the air it was entered by micro-organisms. -
Robert Brown
Discovered the presence of a cell nucleus in plants. -
Matthias J. Schleiden
Proposed a cell theory applying to plants - that all plant tissues were made up of cells, and cells were the basic building block of all plants. -
Theodor Schwann
Proposed that plants and animals were both made up of cells, and rewrote statements on cells into one theory, which stated that cells are organisms and all organisms are made up of one of more cells, and that the cell is the basic unit of structure for all organisms. -
Albrecht von Roelliker
Discovered that sperm and ova were also cells. -
Rudolph Virchow
"Omnis cellula e cellula" - all cells develop from pre-existing cells. He also proposed that disease comes from change in normal cells. -
Louis Pasteur
Figured out that bacteria growing in food and drink came from the air or environment, disproving the theory of spontaneous generation.