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First Compound Microscope
Zacharias Janssen, a spectacle maker invented the first compound microscope -
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Spontaneous generation vs cell theory
Prior to the seventeenth century, biologists developed a theory—the ‘theory of spontaneous generation’—that some animals such as worms and frogs could spontaneously emerge from mud or water, and that organisms such as maggots developed from rotting meat. However, the Italian scientist Francesco Redi showed that maggots developed only on meat that flies had laid their eggs on. -
Robert Hooke
An English scientist discovered a honeycomb-like structure in a cork slice using a compound microscope. He witnessed the cell walls within dead tissues. He later identified these individual sectors as cells. -
Micro-organisms
Anton Van Leeuwenhoek saw micro-organisms under the microscope during his viewing of drops of pond water. He named the organisms animalcules. -
Living Bacteria
Anton was the first to discover living bacteria during his studies of saliva. -
Cell Theory Proposition
Henri Dutrochet observed that all organisms consist of cells -
Nucleus
As Robert Brown was studying the cells of an orchid plant, he discovered and described the structure in the cell called the nucleus -
Building Blocks Of Life
Biologists Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann developed the idea that all organisms are composed of cells. Following this scientists regarded that cells are in fact the building blocks of life. -
Omnis cellula e cellula
Rudolph Virchow proposed "Omnis cellula e cellula" which translates to cells only develop from existing cells. New cells are formed by preexisting cells dviidng. -
Pasteur
Louis Pasteur finally dispelled the theory of spontaneous generation by designing a swan-necked flask, which trapped microbes carried on dust particles that lodged in the neck of the flask. Air entered the flask but no microbes grew in the boiled broth because they had been trapped in the neck. Pasteur developed heat sterilisation techniques and used a compound microscope with the most advanced lenses of the time to view and describe the replication of bacteria. -
Oil Immersion Objectives
Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe produced the first oil immersion objectives. Images could be magnified over 1000×. -
Mitosis
By the proposition of Virchow's idea, Walter Flemming ended up describing mitosis through his observations of living and stained cells -
Siemens
The first commercial transmission electron microscope was developed by Siemens -
Confocal Microscope
The first confocal microscope was developed by Marvin Minsky, these microscopes had the ability to produce three-dimensional images of cells and cell structures -
Cloning
Mice are cloned from somatic cells