Contributions to the cell theory

  • Robert Hooke

    Robert Hooke

    Robert Hooke discovered the cell approximately in 1665. In cork, he discovered the organization of cells and introduced the word CELL to science. Hooke looked through a microscope that was 50x the magnification and saw little spaces in between a piece of cork he was looking at.
  • Francesco Redi

    Francesco Redi

    An Italian physician, Francesco Redi, performed an experiment to see if rotting meat changed into flies. He discovered that only flies to could make more flies, thus disproving the theory of spontaneous generation.
  • Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

    Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

    Leeuwenhoek discovered microorganisms approximately in 1674 while looking through a microscope examining pond water. He called them animaculus. Leeuwenhoek also redefined the microscope with the magnification increasing to at least 270x.
  • Robert Brown

    Robert Brown

    Robert Brown discovers the nucleus of the cell. He stresses its importance in fertilisation.
  • Mathias Jacob Schleiden

    Mathias Jacob Schleiden

    He observed that all plants are made of cells.
  • Thomas Schwann

    Thomas Schwann

    He observed that all animals are made of cells. Talking to Schleiden, they realized that all living things are made of cells
  • Jan Evangelista Purkinje

    Jan Evangelista Purkinje

    He discovered the microtome to cut thin slices of material to watch it in the microscope. He described cerebellum neurons
  • Gregor Mendel

    Gregor Mendel

    He described the Hereditary Factors as the responsible of the transmission of hereditary traits
  • Louis Pasteur

    Louis Pasteur

    He demonstrated that microorganisms did not appear by spontaneous generation, but by the division of previous cells.
  • Friedrich Miescher

    Friedrich Miescher

    He isolated a non-proteinic substance from the nucleus of pus cells that happened to be DNA. He called it nuclein
  • Sutton and Boveri

    Sutton and Boveri

    They introduce the idea of genes as the structures that carry genetic information
  • Santiago Ramón y Cajal

    He is the father of neuroscience. He described the way neurons transmit the nerve impulses (synapse). He was awarded with the Nobel price
  • Thomas Morgan

    Thomas Morgan

    He discovered that genes are located in the chromosomes
  • Rosalind Franklin

    Rosalind Franklin

    She worked with X-rays, taking pictures to DNA molecules. She made the picture 51, on which Watson and Crick based the description of the DNA molecule structure
  • Watson and Crick

    Watson and Crick

    They established the molecular structure of the DNA and indicated how it will copy itself
  • Lynn Margulis

    Lynn Margulis

    She set the endosymbiotic theory that describes the origin of eukaryotic cells as the result of a symbiosis with prokaryotic cells