Question

Cell wall was discovered by
(a)Robert Brown
(b)Malpighi
(c)Robert Hooke
(d)Nageli

Answer 1

Hint: Cell wall is the outermost layer of the cell found in plants and bacteria. It was discovered by the scientist who also discovered the first cells inside the cork of a plant. However, these cells were not living cells.

Complete answer:
The cell wall was discovered by an English scientist known as Robert Hooke in 1665. He is now known as ‘England’s Leonardo’. He studied a thin slice of cork under a microscope that he himself made. He saw small compartments and named them cellula. He wrote about this in his book Micrographia where he mentioned that these compartments must be passages for conducting fluids inside the plant. We now know that what he discovered were cell walls as the cells of cork are not living cells.

Additional Information: Let us study about the other scientists mentioned in the options:
Robert Brown: He is a Scottish botanist who discovered the nucleus of a cell but he is even more famous for the discovery of random particle movement which is known as “Brownian movement”.
Malpighi: Marcello Malpighi was an Italian biologist who discovered capillaries. The Malpighian tubules (excretory structures in arthropods) and Malpighian corpuscles (renal corpuscle) are named after him.
Nageli: Nageli is a Swiss botanist who studied cell division and pollination. He introduced the concept of meristem in plants.
So, the correct option is ‘Robert Hooke’.

Note: -The first living cells were discovered by Anton van Leeuwenhoek.
-Cell wall is found in plant cells and it is fully permeable i.e. it cannot control the movement of substances in and out of the cell.
-The function of the cell wall includes providing shape to the cell and preventing it from bursting or collapsing during extreme cases of change in water level.