The
first look into the cellula
Cell, the first word
to be encountered when Biology is introduced to us as a subject. In fact, also
at your graduation level Cell Biology is the first subject to be
taught at any departments of biological Science. So, we can assume that more or
less anyone from the science background knows about the cell. But if you ask them,
“Who developed the microscope?”, the majority of the answers you shall get is “Robert
Hooke”. No doubt the contribution of Robert Hooke towards Biology is
remarkable but he didn’t invent the microscope.
It was around 1590, two Dutch lens makers by the
name of Hans and Zacharias Janssen invented the first compound
microscope. That was the time when eyeglasses were beginning to be used widely
among the populace. They accidentally discovered the microscope when they put
two convex lenses together in a tube.
The first to publish observations made with a
microscope was a Yorkshire scientist Henry Power and in 1661 Marcello
Malphigi used a microscope to provide clinching evidence in support of Harvery’s
theory of Blood Circulation, when he discovered the capillary vessels in the
lungs of a frog.
These all are the skipped part of Biology Textbook. The
most celebrated part is “The
discovery of cell by Robert Hooke in 1665”.
Robert Hooke was the first to make significant improvement to the basic design of microscope. He used a bi-convex objective lens placed in the snout, combined with an eyepiece lens and a tube or field lens. He placed a cork cell under this microscope and observed that he could plainly see the cork to be made up of tiny spaces surrounded by walls. In his landmark book Micrographia, Hooke called these spaces "cells" because they resembled the small rooms monks lived in (cella in Latin).
So, by this he became the discoverer of cell. But it
is to be noted that he discovered dead cell. And the credit of the discovery of
the first living cell goes to Anton van Leeuwenhoek. He was a Dutch
businessman and amateur scientist who made his own lenses that could magnify
objects almost 300- fold, or 270x. Leeuwenhoek went on to look at many
other specimens and became the first person to see tiny single-celled organisms
known as bacteria. He was able to identify the first accurate description of
red blood cells and discovered bacteria in 1676. He also found for the first
time the sperm cells of animals and humans. Once discovering these types of
cells, Leeuwenhoek saw that the fertilization process requires the sperm
cell to enter the egg cell. This put an end to the previous theory of
spontaneous generation.
Under these microscopes,
Leeuwenhoek found motile objects. In a letter to The Royal Society on October
9, 1676, he states that motility is a quality of life therefore these were
living organisms.
After that many advancements were done, it was Henri
Dutrochet who stated that the cell is the fundamental, structural and physiological
unit of organization
In 1804, Karl Rudolphi and J.H.F. Link
were awarded the prize for they were the first to prove that cells had
independent cell walls. Before, it had been thought that cells shared walls and
the fluid passed between them this way.
Ultimately in the 1830’s Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden proposed the first Cell Theory and in 1855, the German doctor Rudolf Virchow proposed that new cells are formed only from existing cells.
Over centuries with the contribution of many genius
minds now we have the Modern Interpretation of Cell Theory and the advanced
electron microscope with the magnification of 200000 X.
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