-
Robert Hooke
When viewing a thin cutting of a cork using a primitive compound microscope, he discovered empty spaces contained by walls and termed them as pores/cells. -
Anton Van Leeuwenhoek
Used methods for grinding and polishing tiny lenses of great curvature which gave magnifications up to 270x diameters. This then lead him to be the first to see and describe living cells. Such as: bacteria, yeast plants, and circulation of blood and protozoa -
Matthias Jacob Schleiden
Schleiden preferred to study plant structure under the microscope in which he stated that the different parts of the plant organism are composed of cells. recognized the importance of the cell nucleus discovered by Hooke and sensed its connection with cell division and discovered that cells are the basic building blocks of all plants -
Robert Brown
Discovered the nucleus in plant cells within an orchid cell, and used an advanced microscope system to make his discovery. contributed to cell theory by showing the radical motion of molecules within a cell under the light of a microscope. -
Theodor Schwann
Together with Matthias Schleiden he formulated the cell theory of life (which states: 1 - Cells are organisms and all organisms consist of one or more cells 2 - The cell is the basic unit of structure for all organisms) , which is basically a description of the various parts and functions of plant and animal cells. He postulated that cells are present in plants and animals as well as non-living things and that, although there are many different types of cells, they are structurally similar. -
Rudolf Virchow
He had the idea that all cells arise from other cells, rather than being formed by the action of a life force from other matter. argued that cells only formed from the division of other cells and that the cell is the basic unit of organization for living organisms. He was one of the first to accept the work of Robert Remak, who showed the origins of cells was the division of pre-existing cells.
