Question: Who came up with the idea of cells being living things and who proved it?

Alex Pool answered on 9 Nov 2014:

The first person to identify cells was Robert Hooke in 1665. He was looking down a microscope at some wood and saw it was made up of these tiny little boxes. He called them cells as they reminded him of the tiny rooms that monks used to live in called Cellulae, which came from the Latin for small room “Cellula”. Whilst he identified them, he had no idea what these cells actually did – his microscope wasn’t great as that was almost 350 years ago so he couldn’t see that the cells were full of components so he didn’t realise they were actually alive.

About ten years later another scientist called Anton van Leeuwenhoek was able to identify organisms that were made up of single cells moving around and he called them ‘animalcules’ and whilst he came closer to understanding cells being living organisms it wasn’t until almost 150 years later that Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden came up with Cell Theory which said that all:
1) All living organisms are composed of one or more cells
2) The cell is the most basic unit of life

So whilst Robert Hooke identified them, it wasn’t until much later that people really started to understand what it was these “cells” were and did.