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Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
A Dutch naturalist who first discovered and identified microorganisms. -
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Robert Hooke
an English physicist who was also a distinguished microscopist -
Hooke published Micrographia
Micrographia was the first important work devoted to microscopical observation, and
showed what the microscope could mean for naturalists -
Motile particles were deemed as life
The particles that he saw under his microscope were motile and,
assuming that motility equates to life, he went on to conclude, in a letter of 9 October 1676 to the Royal Society, that these particles were indeed living organisms. -
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Felice Fontana
The abbot Felice Fontana glimpsed the nucleus in epithelial cells in 1781 -
Period: to
Robert Brown
The Scottish botanist Robert Brown was the first to recognize the nucleus, a term that he introduced, as an essential constituent of living cells -
Period: to
Matthias Jakob Schleiden
the botanist that suggested every structural element of plants is composed of cells or their products -
Period: to
Theodor Schwann
The zoologist concluded that animals are also composed of cells, like plants -
Achromatic microscopes are introduced
They allow more precise histological observations. Improvements were also made in tissue preservation and -treating techniques. -
Nucleus Recognized
Lead to the discovery that the nucleus is essential to cell life -
Plants were suggested to have cells
This discovery lead to the formulation of cell theory -
Universal principle of development was discovered
Theodore Schwann stated “there is one universal principle of development for the elementary parts of organisms... and this
principle is in the formation of cells", which lead to the official formulation of the cell theory -
Period: to
Walther Flemming
A biologist who identified the structed within the nucleus -
Mitosis was explained
Walther Flemming who also introduced the term ‘‘mitosis’’ in 1882 and gave a superb description of its various processes. This process was also observed in plants, providing further evidence of the deep unity of the living world.