The Discovery of Cells

Cells are covered in many of the textbooks given to students in middle school and high school. But, who was it that discovered cells? The first observation of cells is attributed to an English scientist named Robert Hooke. He used a microscope to examine a thin slice of cork in 1665. He noticed that the cells appeared in "little boxes". You and me know that plant cells are the "little boxes" Hooke observed, but Robert was the first person to see them. He looked at carrots, ferns, and the stems of elder trees, and all of them displayed a similar formation of cells. Pattern? He was looking only at plant cells. The first person to observe living cells was a Dutch microscope maker named Anton van Leeuwenhoek. After 150 years, scientists began to organize the observations begun by Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek. They formed the cell theory. The theory has three parts: 1. All living things are composed of one or more cells. 2. Cells are the basic units of structure and function in an organism and 3. Cells only come from the reproduction of existing cells. The evidence to support this theory was provided by a trio of German scientists. In 1838, the botanist Matthias Schleiden concluded that all plants are made of cells. A year later, zoologist Theodor Schwann made the same conclusion about animals. Finally, in 1855, a physician named Rudolf Virchow reasoned that cells only come from existing ones. Over the years, modern scientists have gathered a lot of additional information that strongly supports the cell theory.