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In 1665, Robert Hooke made a simple microscope. Using this microscope, he looked at a piece of a cork, which were dead cells of oak bark. Looking at the cork, he noticed small structures resembling boxes. He called these boxes "cellulae", which means "small rooms' in Latin. Hooke called the cells this, as they reminded him of the cells in a monastery.
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A Dutch scientist by the name of Anton van Leeuwenhoek, inspired by a book written by Hooke, designed his own microscope. He saw living organisms in many substances. He had discovered single celled organisms, now referred to as protozoans.
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An English microscopist by the name of John Needham created an experiment to test the theory of spontaneous generation. In this experiment, he boiled samples of microbes to aid in the generation process. This idea is that life occurs spontaneously at the microscopic level without the need for reproduction from preexisting life. But, his theory was disproved by Lazzaro Spallanzani.
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An Italian scientist by the name of Lazzaro Spallanzani suggested that microbes could move through the air using spontaneous generation. But, upon performing experiments similar to those the John Needham performed, Spallanzani disproved this theory. His work suggested that all cells come from pre-existing cells.
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In 1838, a German scientist named Matthias Schleiden studied plants and plant tissue. From his studies, he concluded that all plants are composed of individual cells.
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A year following the discovery of Matthias Schleiden, another German scientist, by the name of Thomas Schwann, made another discovery. He observed that all animal tissue consists of individual cells.
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In 1855, a Prussian physician by the name of Rudolph Virchow probosed that all cells are produced from the division of existing cells.
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