“THE WACKY HISTORY OF

CELL THEORY”
GENERAL BIOLOGY
IRSH L. SOLOMON
GRADE 11 STEM
 “cell”
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TIMELINE LOREM
IPSUM DOLOR
Theory
CELL
Cells are the basic building blocks of all
living things. The human body is composed of
trillions of cells. ... Cells have many parts, each
with a different function. Some of these parts,
called organelles, are specialized structures that
perform certain tasks within the cell.
Case in point: Cell Theory. This theory is one
of the foundations of biology. Cell theory has three
parts:

1.The cell is the basic unit of structure

and organization in organisms.
2.The cell is the basic unit of structure
and organization in organisms.
3.All cells come from preexisting cells.
?
The history of the
Cell Theory
 :
Part One

The
Microscope
The story of cell theory started in the Netherlands in
the 1600s. There, a spectacle-maker named 
Zacharais Janssen is said to have invented
a compound microscope. A compound
microscope uses two lenses. One lens is close to the
object being viewed. This is called the objective lens.
The other lens is close to the viewer. This is called
the eyepiece. Microscopes became extremely popular
among scientists
Two Dutch eye glassmakers, zacharias
janssen and son Hans janssen
experimented with two lenses placed
on a tube. The janssens observed that
viewed object infront of the tube,
appeared greatly enlarged, creating
both the forerunner of the compound
microscope and the telescope .
Part Two:
The Discovery
of Bacteria
Another Dutch scientist, 
Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, decided to make
his own microscope. He began looking at all
kinds of matter with his invention. He even
looked at the scrapings off his own teeth.
That’s how he discovered bacteria!
In 1678, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek reported that he had
observed "little animals" -- protozoa — through a
microscope. The discovery of the cell was made
possible by the invention of the microscope, which was
made possible by improved lens-grinding techniques
Leeuwenhoek looked at animal and plant tissues, at
mineral crystals and at fossils. He was the first to see
microscopic foraminifera, which he described as
"little cockles. . . no bigger than a coarse sand-grain."
He discovered blood cells, and was the first to see
living sperm cells of animals.
Part Three:
The Discovery
of Cells
Van Leeuwenhoek wrote letters to a
scientist friend in England named 
Robert Hooke. Hooke also studied
objects with a microscope. He
studied a piece of cork and noticed
it was divided up into little
chambers. These reminded him of
monastery cells. So, he named his
discovery cells.
The cell was first discovered and
named by Robert Hooke in 1665.
While observing cork through his
microscope, Hooke saw tiny boxlike
cavities, which he illustrated and described
as cells. He had discovered plant cells!
Hooke's discovery led to the understanding
of cells as the smallest units of life—the
foundation of cell theory.
Parts Four & Five:
More
discoveries
about cells
Next came the work of two German
scientists. Matthias Schleidan was a botanist.
He used microscopes to study plants.
Eventually, he realized that all the plants he
looked at were made of cells. 

Meanwhile, Theodor Schwann studied slides

of animal cells. He concluded that all animals
were also made of cells!
Matthias Jacob Schleiden was a German botanist who,
with Theodor Schwann, cofounded the cell theory.. In 1838
Matthias Schleiden had stated that plant tissues were
composed of cells. Schwann demonstrated the same fact
for animal tissues, and in 1839 concluded that all tissues
are made up of cells: this laid the foundations for the cell
theory. Schwann also worked on fermentation and
discovered the enzyme pepsin.

Schwann, Theodor

In 1838 Matthias Schleiden had stated that plant tissues

were composed of cells. Schwann demonstrated the same
fact for animal tissues, and in 1839 concluded that all
tissues are made up of cells: this laid the foundations for
the cell theory. ... Schwann cells are named after him.
Part Six:
Preexisting
Cells
Eventually, Schneidan and Schwann joined
forces and started to develop the cell theory. But
they disagreed on the third point: that all cells
come from preexisting cells. It took a third
scientist, Rudolf Virchow, to prove that cells did
indeed come from other cells. But the research
he used to prove this actually came from a
German Jewish scientist named Robert Remak!
Rudolf Carl Virchow lived in nineteenth
century Prussia, now Germany, and
proposed that omnis cellula e cellula,
which translates to each cell comes from
another cell, and which became a
fundamental concept for cell theory.

1852
In 1852, Robert Remak (1815–1865), a
prominent neurologist and embryologist,
published convincing evidence that cells are
derived from other cells as a result of cell
division. However, this idea was questioned
by many in the scientific community.
“THE WACKY HISTORY OF CELL THEORY”
GENERAL BIOLOGY

IRISH L. SOLOMON
GRADE 11 STEM