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Hans and Zacharias Janssen
Zacharias Jansen was a Dutch spectacle-maker from Middelburg credited with inventing the first microscope.During the 1590s, the two Dutch spectacle-makers began experimenting. They put several lenses in a tube and made a very important discovery - the object near the end of the tube appeared to be greatly enlarged, much larger than any simple magnifying glass could achieve by itself. -
robert hooke
Robert Hooke, an English scientist, discovered a honeycomb-like structure in a cork slice using a primitive compound microscope. He only saw cell walls as this was dead tissue. He coined the term "cell" for these individual compartments he saw. -
Anton van Leeuwenhoek
Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch biologist, looks at pond water with a microscope he made lenses for. -
Matthias Jakob Schleiden,
Matthias Jakob Schleiden, a German botanist, proposes that all plant tissues are composed of cells, and that cells are the basic building blocks of all plants. This statement was the first generalized statement about cells. -
Theodor Schwann
Theodor Schwann, a German botanist reached the conclusion that not only plants, but animal tissue as well is composed of cells. This ended debates that plants and animals were fundamentally different in structure. He also pulled together and organized previous statement on cells into one theory, which states: 1 - Cells are organisms and all organisms consist of one or more cells 2 - The cell is the basic unit of structure for all organism -
Rudolf Virchow,
Rudolf Virchow, a German physiologist/physician/pathologist added the 3rd part to the cell theory. The original is Greek, and states Omnis cellula e cellula. This translates as all cells develop only from existing cells. Virchow was also the first to propose that diseased cells come from healthy cells.