Question

The scientist who saw the living cell for the first time was
A) Leeuwenhoek
B) M. J. Schleiden
C) Kolliker
D) Palade

Answer 1

Hint: Cells are the basic building blocks of any living organism. However, they weren’t identified till microscopy had advanced enough in the late 17th century. The internal structures of cells were described after the development of the electron microscope.

Complete Answer:
- Robert Hooke was the first scientist to develop the microscope and use it to observe cells. What he saw was the cells of cork, which he described as the cells of a honeycomb. However, what Hooke observed was not living cells, but the cell wall that remained of the dead plant tissue.
- A few years later, the Dutch scientist Anton Van Leeuwenhoek refined the lens of his microscope and actually observed living cells, including human and bacterial cells, in 1674.
- Matthius Schleiden, along with Theodore Schwann, put forward the theory that all organisms contain cells as their building blocks. Schwann however postulated that cells form by spontaneous generation.
- George Palade studied intracellular transport and he was the first to recognise ribosomes – initially called Palade Particles – and identify their function. For his work on ribosomes and endoplasmic reticulum, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974.
- Rudolf Kolliker comes between Schleiden and Palade. In the early 1900s he did a great amount of work on cell and tissue structure and is known as the father of histology.

The correct answer is therefore option (A).

Note: Rudolf Virchow was the scientist who first observed cells dividing and he proposed that living cells can only arise from living cells. From there it was soon clear that both cytoplasm and nuclei divided.