Microscope and the discovery of the cell

1665, 1670s Light and sky observation

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An optical instrument with strong lenses turned on things too small for the eye. The Englishman Robert Hooke in Micrographia (1665) described the pores of cork and called them cells.

The Dutch draper Antoni van Leeuwenhoek from 1673 onwards sent the Royal Society letters about what he saw through single-lens microscopes he ground himself. In 1676 he described 'animalcules' in a drop of water, and Hooke in 1677 reproduced the observation.

Living matter turned out to be built of cells, and water to be populated by invisible life: the beginning of microscopic biology.

Why this date

exact for Hooke's Micrographia (licensed 23 November 1664, on sale January 1665); Leeuwenhoek's letters to the Royal Society from 1673, animalcules 1676, confirmed by Hooke November 1677

What it grew from

• Ground lens and eyeglasses

  prerequisite for · Confidence: high

  The microscope is built from the ground lenses of the spectacle trade: the compound microscope of about 1590 is credited to Dutch spectacle makers, and Leeuwenhoek ground the lenses for his microscopes himself.

  Link sources

  • Britannica, «Microscope: History of optical microscopes» (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    Three Dutch spectacle makers ... have received credit for inventing the compound microscope about 1590.

  • Science Museum (London), «The microscope» (2019) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) made microscopes by grinding his own lenses.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

What grew out of it

• Brewer's yeast turns out to be a living organism: Cagniard-Latour, Schwann, Kützing

  prerequisite for · Confidence: medium

  Budding cells in a yeast mass can be seen only through a microscope; Payen states explicitly that Cagniard-Latour's work was done with the finest microscopes available.

  Dispute: The second quotation is given as background, not as an assertion of the link: Barnett speaks of the improvement of objectives but, in the text found, does not state that the discovery of 1837 was made possible by them. The link rests on the first quotation.

  Link sources

  • Jacques Payen, «Cagniard de la Tour, Charles», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    Reporting on research done with the finest microscopes available, Cagniard wrote, “Ferments… are composed of very simple organized microscopic bodies…

  • James A. Barnett, «Beginnings of microbiology and biochemistry: the contribution of yeast research», Microbiology 149 (3), 557-567 (2003)

    Giovanni Amici (1820), professor of astronomy at Modena, made some of the first microscope objectives to be corrected effectively for chromatic and spherical aberrations.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

• Brown: the nucleus as a regular constituent of the living cell

  prerequisite for · Confidence: medium

  The cell nucleus is a microscopic object, and Florkin links its discovery by Brown directly to the perfecting of the microscope by 1830. Without the instrument the observation is physically impossible.

  Dispute: The confidence is lowered: Florkin speaks of the perfecting of the microscope around 1830, that is, of instruments a century and a half younger than the node mikroskop (1665). The intermediate improvements (achromatic objectives of the 1820s) are not represented by a separate node in the core, and the link runs through them. Moreover, there is a separate literature on which microscope Brown actually used, which could not be checked here; only the dependence on the instrument as such is therefore asserted, not on a particular improvement of it.

  Link sources

  • Marcel Florkin, «Schwann, Theodor Ambrose Hubert», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    It was not until 1830 that the perfecting of the microscope permitted Robert Brown to recognize the presence of the nucleus as the essential characteristic of the plant cell.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

• Chromatin and mitosis: longitudinal splitting of the nuclear threads in cell division

  prerequisite for · Confidence: medium

  The stages of nuclear division could not be told apart until objectives and staining techniques improved: Olby names the poor resolving power of lenses and inadequate staining as the reason for the failures of the 1850s, and Bechtel and Bollhagen ascribe the success in characterizing nuclear events to work with improved microscopes and stains.

  Dispute: None of these authors draws a direct line from the microscope of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek to Flemming: between them lie the achromatic objective of the 1830s, water and oil immersion and Abbe's optics at Zeiss. The link rests on the claim that without improved lenses and staining nuclear division could not be made out, not on a succession of particular instruments.

  Link sources

  • Robert Olby, Flemming, Walther, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1972) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    In the 1850’s attempts to study the process of cell multiplication were vitiated by inadequate techniques of staining and the poor resolving power of lenses.

  • William Bechtel, Andrew Bollhagen, Philosophy of Cell Biology, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    This focus on separate machines in the factory was promoted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when, using improved microscopes and applying stains to enhance contrast, investigators began to identify structures within cells and theorize about their functional significance. Researchers were particularly successful in characterizing the nuclear events in cell division and fertilization. Flemming (1879, 1882) described in detail how the threads that he called chromatin (due to their absorption of dye), later named chromosomes, divided longitudinally

  • Mitsuhiro Yanagida, The Role of Model Organisms in the History of Mitosis Research, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 6 (9), a015768 (2014) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    In the 19th century, pioneering researchers who developed light microscopic techniques discovered characteristic thread-like structures in dye-stained cells before cell division.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

Node sources

• Hooke R. Micrographia, London, 1665 (1665) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Ordered, That the Book written by Robert Hooke, M.A. Fellow of this Society, Entituled, Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies, made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries thereupon, Be printed by John Martyn, and James Allestry, Printers to the said Society. Novem. 23. 1664. BROUNCKER. P.R.S.

• Cambridge University Library Special Collections, «Robert Hooke and his Micrographia» (2015) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  The order of the President of the Royal Society, which gave permission for Micrographia to be printed, is reproduced on the leaf facing the title and bears the date 23 November 1664.

• Britannica, «Microscope: History of optical microscopes» (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  The Dutch civil servant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek began his pioneering observations of freshwater microorganisms in the 1670s.

• Lens on Leeuwenhoek, «The Royal Society received Leeuwenhoek's first letter» (1673) (2020) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  the members read it a few weeks later when Oldenburg published his translation in the next issue Philosophical Transactions, number 94, dated May 19, 1673.

• Science Museum (London), «The microscope» (2019) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Hooke published the 'Micrographia' (1665), an astonishing collection of copper-plate illustrations of objects he had observed with his own compound microscope.

• Lens on Leeuwenhoek, «The Royal Society read the first part of Leeuwenhoek's long Letter L-040 of the previous 9 October about little animals in various waters» Verified 20 Sep 2026

  There was read part of a very long letter of Mr. Leewenhoeck to Mr. OLDENBURG, dated at Delft, 9th October, 1676, which had not been produced before, because it could not be sooner translated into English out of the Low Dutch language, in which it was written. The contents thereof were a great number of observations made by Mr. Leewenhoeck with his microscope, concerning certain little animals found by him in vast quantities in common water, snow-water, well-water, and such water, wherein several sorts of spices had stood infused, both whole and pounded.

• Lens on Leeuwenhoek, «Robert Hooke finally succeeded in replicating Leeuwenhoek's observations of little animals» Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

  In this Mr. HOOKE had all the week discovered great numbers of exceedingly small animals swimming to and fro. [...] They were seen by Mr. HENSHAW, Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, Sir JOHN HOSKYNS, Sir JONAS MOORE, Dr. MAPLETOFT, Mr. HILL, Dr. CROUNE, Dr. GREW, Mr. AUBREY, and divers others; so that there was no longer any doubt of Mr. LEEWENHOECK'S discovery.

"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

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