Cell Theory

This is Robert Hooke. It's 1665 and microscopes have only just been invented. For the first time, scientists were able to look at things too small to be seen by the naked eye, and Robert Hooke was fascinated by what he saw. Oh! This piece of cork seems to be made up of tiny compartments, like lots of little rooms all fitted together. Rooms, or cells. Yes, they look like cells. Hooke became famous for being the first person to use the word cell to describe the room-like structures inside his piece of cork. He spent many hours carefully drawing their honeycomb pattern. In 1833, one of the leading botanists of the time was Scotsman Robert Brown. Having travelled the world and collected hundreds of plants, he made a startling discovery. There are so many plants, all of them so different. Except... Except when I look at them close up. Every plant is made up of cells, and inside every cell there is a sort of dark, dense blob. Whichever plant I choose, it's always the same. I can find not one single exception. Robert Brown called the blob-like structure inside each cell the nucleus. About this time, scientists were beginning to realise that all living things were made of cells. A few years later, in 1839, two German scientists, Dr Schwan and Dr Schleiden, came up with a theory which was to change the way scientists viewed the living world. Dr Schwan? Ja, Dr Schleiden. That's them. I think we have discovered something completely amazing. The material inside the cell moves about very slowly, I grant you. But still, she moves. We can only conclude one thing from this. You mean? Ja, the cells are alive! This got me thinking. Sometimes a single cell exists on its own. Complex creatures like you are made up of millions of living cells, all working together. All living things are made of cells, no matter how big or small. Like a plant. Even this fly. Ja. And the theory they eventually came up with was that cells are the basic building blocks of life. Which early scientists contributed to the development of the cell theory?