Cell Timeline

  • Zacharius and Hans Janssen

    Makes the first microscope by placing two lenses in a tube.
  • Hans Lippershey

    was a lens maker, often credited as being the inventor of the telescope, being the first person to create and disseminate the designs for the first practical telescope.
  • Galileo Galilei

    Pioneered "experimental science method" and was the first to use a refracting microscope to make important astronomical discoveries .
  • Robert Hooke

    Was one of the greatest scientists of the 17 century. His research and findings were often overshadowed by those of his rival Sir Isaac Newton. One cannot argue though their importance in the development of fields such as physics, astronomy, biology, and medicine, to name a few.
  • Anton Van Leeuwenhoek

    in 1670 he described cells in a drop of pond water using a microscope.He made his own fine quality lens for use in monocular microscopes and was the first person to observe bacteria and protozoa. Some of his lenses could magnify objects 250X.
  • Theodor Schwann

    German physiologist who served as an assistant to Johannes Muller. He discovered the digestive enzyme pepsin in 1836. He showed that yeast were tiny plant-like organisms, and suggested that fermentation was a biological process.
  • Mathhieas Jakob Schleinden

    was the first to recognize the importance of cells as fundamental units of life.
  • Rudolf Virchow

    was a German pathologist, anthropologist and statesman, widely credited for his advancements in public health. Known as the "father of pathology,
  • Robert Remak

    Identified the Cell Membrane in Cell Division. This occured January 1, 1855 at the University of Berlin. He wanted to see how cells originated by creating a chemical hardening agent which allowed him to observe how the membrane divided the cell.
  • Ernst Abbe

    was a brilliant German mathematician and physicist who made several of the most important contributions to the design of lenses for optical microscopy.
  • Leo Szilard

    Szilard was probably the first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might work. He is best known for his pioneering work in nuclear physics.
  • Gerd Binning

    Co-inventor of the scanning tunneling microscope 1986
  • Ernst Ruska

    designed and built the first electron microscope, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. The electron microscope, like many other complex technological developments based upon current scientific research, cannot be associated exclusively with a single inventor.