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340 BCE
aristotle
Aristotle was a greek philosopher whom happen to have many dissections leading to his discoveries on the nature of life and his rudimentary classifications of living things. Aristotle observed preformation and epigenesis when theorizing how animals and plants developed. -
Zacharias Jansen invents
Zacharias was known fro inventing the compound optical microscope which made the observation of cells easier and more practical. This allowed English Scientist Robert Hooke use a primitive microscope to view the cell walls of a piece of cork. -
Robert Hooke
Robert was known as the renaissance man of the 17th century. His most important publication was 'Micrographia', a 1665 volume documenting experiments he had made with a microscope. Hooke coined the term cell for describing biological organisms. -
Jan Baptista Van Helment
Jan contributed to the discovery that the theory of spontaneous generation, time period when humans believed living organisms were created by non-living things or objects, was true. He also played a major role in discovering photosynthesis and chemistry overall. He recognized the existence of discrete gases and was best known for identifying Carbon Dioxide. -
Anton Van Leeowenhoek
Anton is known for considering that what is true in natural philosophy can be most fruitfully investigated by the experimental method. He made over 500 'microscopes', a fewer than 10 still survive present day. His best known instruments are the powerful magnifying glasses. He had discovered blood cells, bacteria, and protozoa. His researches on lower animals refunded the doctrine of spontaneous generation. Anton's observations helped lay the foundations for the sciences of bacteriology. -
Lorenz Oken
Oken was a german naturalist whose speculations that plants and animals are made up of living 'infusoria' led to the cell theory. He came up with a new system of animal classification that demonstrated the path of evolution. -
Theodor Schwann German Psychologist
Theodor founded modern histology by defining the cell as the basic unit of animal structure. Through his seminal work, "Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the structure and Growth of Animals and Plants", he concluded all living things are composed of cells and cell products. Schwann believed that new cells formed from pre-existing cells. He discovered new cells known as Schwann cells. -
Robert Brown
Brown was an eminent scottish botanist who lived during the 18th and 19th centuries. he was the first to recognize the nucleus as an essential constituent of living cells as well as recognizing the general occurrence of the nucleus. He detailed the nucleus like no other. He was the first to also recognize the difference between angiosperms and gymnosperms. -
Matthias Schleiden
Matthias was a german botanist and is cofounder of the cell theory. He preferred to study plant structure under the microscope. He wrote 'Contributions to Phylogenesis', in which he stated that the different parts of the plant organisms are composed of cells or derivatives of cells. He was also one of the first german biologists to accept Darwins theory of evolution. -
Rudolf Albert Von Kolliker
Albert was a swiss embryologist and histologist and was one of the first to interpret tissue structure in terms or cellular elements. He realized that sperm and eggs are cells too. -
Rudolf Virchow
Rudolf was a german doctor, pathologist, and an anthropologist. He pioneered the modern concept of pathological processes by his application of the cell theory to explain the effects of disease in the organs and tissues of the body. He strongly emphasized that diseases arose in individuals cells. And he was one of the first ones to accept that the origins of cells were the division of pre-existing cells. -
Louis Pasteur
Louis discovered that microbes were responsible for souring alcohol and came up with the process of pasteurization where bacteria is destroyed by heating beverages. He had proven spontaneous generation to be false and replaced it with biogenesis which states that all living things come from pre existing life.
