Cell Theory

  • 330 BCE

    Aristotle

    Established methods for investigation and reasoning and provided a theory on how embryos generate and develo
  • Zacharias Jansen

    Earned credit for inventing the compound microscope
  • Jan Baptist Van Helmont

    His theory of “ferments” as the agents bringing about physiological processes is a crude precursor of the idea of enzymes.
  • Robert Hook

    He used a crude microscope to observe a thin slice of cork.
  • Anton van Leeuwenhoek

    Learned to grind lenses and assemble them into simple microscopes.
  • Robert Brown

    Worked on plants of New Zealand and Australia that became a classic. Another thing that was important were his descriptions of how certain plants adapt to different environmental conditions.
  • Lorenz Oken

    Elaborated wolfgang von goethe’s theory that the vertebrate skull formed gradually from the fusion of vertebrae
  • Theodor Schwann

    Extended the cell theory to include animals. The formation of the cell theory states that all plants and animals are made up of cells.
  • Matthias Schleiden

    Stated that the lower plants all consist of one cell while the higher ones are composed of individual cells.
  • Albrecht von Roelliker

    Diiscovered through the help of a microscope that sperm and egg were composed of cells and the humans are formed of cells from beginning to end.
  • Rudolf Virchow

    expressed the fundamental dictum regarding cells, for all cellular reproduction is the ultimate basis of the unity of life. Also he established the relationship between abnormal events in the body and unusual cellular activities. His work gave new advances in medicine.
  • Louis Pasteur

    Set out to disprove spontaneous generation with now classic experiments that both firmly established the cell theory beyond doubt and solidified the basic steps of the modern scientific method