Word: schwann
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Schleiden and Schwann. In 1839 in Germany lived two scientists, Mathias Schleiden and his follower, Theodore Schwann. In his publication on the cell issued at that time, Schleiden made this statement: "Each cell leads a double life: an independent one pertaining to its own development alone, and another, incidental insofar as it has become an integral part of the plant. It is, however, apparent that the vital process of the individual cell must form the very first, absolutely indispensable basis of ... physiology...
Many a textbook since then has honored Schleiden and Schwann as the first to postulate that the cell is a fundamental unit of life. Some time ago Joseph Meyer, a consultant at the Library of Congress, conceived the idea of a great centenary celebration in honor of Schleiden and Schwann and of the discovery of the cell theory in 1839. Hence Stanford's symposium...
...wants less than to spoil the celebration. But as a scholar and scientist he is an uncompromising iconoclast. So he thinks it only fair to make the point that the cell theory was set afoot not in 1839 but during the previous 170 years, not by Herren Schleiden and Schwann but by a number of men almost nobody knows...
...Thereafter numbers of other scientists saw and studied cells.** For a long time the mysterious little chambers of life were called by various names, such as "vesicles," "utricles" and "globules." Then Hooke's original name, "cell," came back into use, and stuck. By the time Schleiden and Schwann appeared on the scene, cells had been identified as independent units, one-celled plants had been discovered, the nucleus (G.H.Q. of a cell's organization) had been found, and the cell's method of reproduction (by division) ascertained...
Biologist Conklin remarks that Schleiden's theory of cell development was cockeyed in major respects, and he had an unpleasantly cavalier way of dealing with contemporaries and predecessors, some of whom were right where he was wrong. Schwann took over some of Schleiden's views and from error compounded further error...