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Compound Microscope invented
It is difficult to determine exactly who invented the first compound microscope, Zacharias Janssen, Cornelis Drebbel and Hans Lippershey all have claims to have first made the compound microscope however this is irrelevant. What is important is that this invention sought to increase scientists' ability to understand life that cannot be seen with the naked eye. This included the later discovery of cells within all living things. -
Robert Hooke
Robert Hook was the first to describe his observations of cells within small slices of cork using the compound microscope. He described these cells as "‘filled with air and that air is perfectly enclosed in little boxes or cells distinct from one another". Being the first to coin the word 'cell'. He however was only observing the dead cork cells and had not observed living plant or animal cells. -
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
Antony made his own microscopes that only used a singular lens, not like the other compound lenses of the time. Antony was very curious about the microscopic world and basically anything he could observe with his microscope that he could not observe with his eyes. As such he observed living cells at work when he closely observed a drop of water from a pond. In the drop of pond water he observed protozoa as well as other microorganisms. -
Henri Dutrochet
Henri published the idea that all organisms are composed of cells after observing many different plant species through a microscope. He was one of the first to recognise the importance of the individual cell in an organism's overall functioning. -
Robert Brown
Robert brown was the first to discover and describe the nucleus of a plant cell, he did this through the use of the ever improving compound microscope. His discover was an uncovering of another piece of the puzzle that was cell theory. -
Schleiden and Schwann
Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann added on a major component of cell theory; that all organisms are made up of cells. Schleiden was the first to view yeast cells budding and reproducing new cells. Through their research and the collective research of other scientists of their era, it was understood that cells are the building blocks of life. Hence the first part of cell theory is created. -
Albrecht von Roelliker
Albrecht discovered and came to the conclusion that sperm cells and egg cells are actually cells. This helped broaden the image of cells a little bit more than it was before. -
Rudolph Virchow
Virchow was able to come to a conclusion based on collective research and some of his own, that all cells only develop from preexisting cells. Some evidence was his observation of the budding of yeast under a microscope. This is the second part to cell theory and thanks to Rudolf's conclusion further research into the area was more easily understood as their core knowledge was formed. -
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur disproved the theory of spontaneous generation. He was the first to prove that all cells come only from other cells.He did this by conducting an experiment that showed that cells would only grow if a broth was exposed to air. -
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel proposed the Theory of Heredity that described the relationship between traits of a plant and the traits of the parent plant/s. His theory supposed that the DNA traits of organisms was passed down from it 'parents' and a resulting offspring's traits were depending on a parent's dominant or recessive traits. His research into the heredity traits of offspring is another part of cell theory. -
Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe
They produced the first oil immersion objectives. Images could be magnified by a much greater amount than had been done before, form around 200 times to over 1000 times. -
Walther Flemming
Flemming researched cell division and replication, specifically he described chromosome behaviour during mitosis. Through his research he also gave more evidence toward's Virchow's ideas of cell replication and verified that all cells did indeed come from other cells. Through the large amount of evidence further supporting Virchow's belief, it solidified the ideas about cell replication and that part of cell theory. -
First Commercial Transmission Electron Microscope Produced
The first commercially sold trasmission electron Microscope is produced in North American University of Toronto. This Microscope is just an example of many of the future Microscopes to come that will be part of the growing technology that allows scientists to develop better understandings of cells and possibly in the future, adapt and expand cell theory.