Do First: The Wacky History of the Cell Theory

Last updated 9 months ago

4 questions

One of the great things about science is that when scientists make a discovery, it's not always in a prescribed manner, as in, only in a laboratory under strict settings, with white lab coats and all sorts of neat science gizmos that go, "Beep!" In reality, the events and people involved in some of the major scientific discoveries are as weird and varied as they get. 

There are 3 parts to the cell theory:

One: all organisms are _______ of one or more cells. 

Two: the cell is the basic _______  of structure and organization in organisms.

Three: all cells come from _______  cells.

The microscope soon became a hot item that every naturalist or scientist at the time wanted to play with, making it much like the iPad of its day. 

One such person was a fellow Dutchman by the name of __________, who heard about microscopes, & instead of going out & buying one, __________. It was a strange little contraption indeed, as it looked more like a tiny paddle the size of a sunglass lens.

Once Leeuwenhoek had his microscope ready, he went to town, looking at anything & everything he could with them, including the gunk on his teeth. Yes, you heard right. He actually discovered __________ by looking at dental scrapings, which, when you keep in mind that people didn't brush their teeth much -- if at all -- back then, he must have had a lovely bunch of bacteria to look at.

When he wrote about his discovery, he didn't call them bacteria, as we know them today. But he called them "__________," because they looked like little animals to him.

While Leeuwenhoek was staring at his teeth gunk, he was also sending letters to a scientific colleague in England, by the name of __________. 

Hooke was a guy who really loved all aspects of science, so he dabbled in a little bit of everything, including physics, chemistry and biology. Thus it is Hooke who we can thank for the term "the cell," as he was looking at a piece of cork under his microscope, and the little chambers he saw reminded him of cells, __________. Think college dorm rooms, but without the TVs, computers and really annoying roommates. Hooke was something of an underappreciated scientist of his day -- something he brought upon himself, as he made the mistake of locking horns with one of the most famous scientists ever, Sir Isaac Newton.

Remember when I said Hooke dabbled in many different fields? Well, after Newton published a groundbreaking book on how planets move due to gravity, Hooke made the claim that Newton had been inspired by Hooke's work in physics. Newton, to say the least, did not like that, which sparked a tense relationship between the two that lasted even after Hooke died, as quite a bit of Hooke's research -- as well as his only portrait -- was ... misplaced, due to Newton. Much of it was rediscovered, thankfully, after Newton's time, but not his portrait, as, sadly, no one knows what Robert Hooke looked like.

Fast-forward to the 1800s, where 2 German scientists discovered something that today we might find rather obvious, but helped tie together what we now know as the cell theory. 

The first scientist was Matthias Schleiden, a botanist who liked to study plants under a microscope. From his years of studying different plant species, it finally dawned on him that every single plant he had looked at __________. At the same time, on the other end of Germany was Theodor Schwann, a scientist who not only studied slides of animal cells under the microscope and got a special type of nerve cell named after him. After studying animal cells for a while, he, too, came to the conclusion that all __________. 

Immediately, he reached out via snail mail to other scientists working in the same field with Schleiden, who got back to him, and the 2 started working on the beginnings of the cell theory. A bone of contention arose between them. As for the last part of the cell theory -- that __________ -- Schleiden didn't exactly subscribe to that thought, as he swore cells came from free-cell formation, where they just kind of spontaneously crystallized into existence. 

That's when another scientist named __________, stepped in with research showing that cells did come from other cells, research that was actually -- hmm ... How to put it? -- "borrowed without permission" from a Jewish scientist by the name of Robert Remak, which led to 2 more feuding scientists. Thus, from teeth gunk to ticking off Newton, crystallization to Schwann cells, the cell theory came to be an important part of biology today.