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Athanasius Kircher found that maggots hatched from decaying tissues
Maggots and several other forms of life were born out of living material. Scientists were understanding that organisms only come from things that are alive. Rocks and other objects couldn't life. -
Jan Swammerdam saw that a frog embryo existed of globular particles.
Along with globular particles being found inside frog eggs, Jan Swammerdam began to observe oval shaped red blood cells. Frog embryo's were made of circular fragments. -
Robert Hook came up with the term “cell” naming it after prison cells.
After scientists began to acknowledge the existence of small life building blocks. A cell was the first term used to describe these unknown organisms. -
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek observed particles under a microscope that he found were alive.
He found out that cells were motile and sent a letter to the Royal society suggesting that cells are alive. Then Antoni called cells animalcules because they looked like little animals. -
Lazzaro Spallanzani found that an organism derives from another organism.
Now the fact that all organisms came from pre-existing organism was now well known. It was common knowledge that cells came from other cells. A century later, spontaneous generation would be brought up as a topic. -
Robert Brown named the nucleus.
The nucleus was named. It was already discovered by Felice Fontana, but Brown was the one to give it a name. It was seen as an essential part of cells. -
Theodore Schwann stated that tissue was made up of cells
More things were being found that contained cells. He said that the formation of cells had to occur in every organism. -
Matthias Jakob had a hypothesis that every part of a plant was made of cells.
Suggested that all plants and their parts were made up of cells and/or their products. The world was now getting closer to realizing all living things were made of cells. -
Robert Remak refuted the “free cell formation” theory
With the help of Albert Kölliker, Remak proved that cells are formed only by pre-existing cells and nothing else. The specifics of cellular division weren't known back then, but they still knew it happened. -
Walther Flemming comes up with the term mitosis
Was the term used to describe cells splitting and making new cells. Also had many other functions like splitting chromosomes. Chromatin, structures that appeared during cell division, was found by Flemming as well