WEBVTT

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One of the great things about science

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is that when scientists make a discovery,

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it's not always in a prescribed manner,

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as in, only in a laboratory
under strict settings,

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with white lab coats

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and all sorts of neat
science gizmos that go, "Beep!"

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In reality,

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the events and people involved

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in some of the major
scientific discoveries

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are as weird and varied as they get.

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My case in point:

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The Weird History of the Cell Theory.

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There are three parts to the cell theory.

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One: all organisms are composed
of one or more cells.

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Two: the cell is the basic
unit of structure

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and organization in organisms.

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And three: all cells come
from preexisting cells.

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To be honest, this all sounds
incredibly boring

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until you dig a little deeper

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into how the world
of microscopic organisms,

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and this theory came to be.

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It all started in the early 1600s
in the Netherlands,

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where a spectacle maker
named Zacharias Janssen

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is said to have come up
with the first compound microscope,

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along with the first telescope.

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Both claims are often disputed,

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as apparently he wasn't the only bored guy

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with a ton of glass lenses
to play with at the time.

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Despite this,

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the microscope soon became a hot item

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that every naturalist or scientist
at the time wanted to play with,

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making it much like the iPad of its day.

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One such person

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was a fellow Dutchman by the name
of Anton van Leeuwenhoek,

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who heard about
these microscope doohickeys,

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and instead of going out and buying one,

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he decided to make his own.

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And it was a strange
little contraption indeed,

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as it looked more like a tiny paddle
the size of a sunglass lens.

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If he had stuck two together,

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it probably would have made
a wicked set of sunglasses

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that you couldn't see much out of.

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Anyhoo, once Leeuwenhoek
had his microscope ready,

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he went to town,

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looking at anything and everything
he could with them,

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including the gunk on his teeth.

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Yes, you heard right.

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He actually discovered bacteria

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by looking at dental scrapings,

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which, when you keep in mind

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that people didn't brush their teeth
much -- if at all -- back then,

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he must have had a lovely bunch
of bacteria to look at.

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When he wrote about his discovery,

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he didn't call them bacteria,
as we know them today.

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But he called them "animalcules,"

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because they looked
like little animals to him.

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While Leeuwenhoek was staring
at his teeth gunk,

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he was also sending letters
to a scientific colleague in England,

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by the name of Robert Hooke.

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Hooke was a guy who really loved
all aspects of science,

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so he dabbled in a little bit
of everything, including physics,

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chemistry and biology.

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Thus it is Hooke who we can thank
for the term "the cell,"

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as he was looking at a piece of cork
under his microscope,

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and the little chambers he saw
reminded him of cells,

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or the rooms monks slept in
in their monasteries.

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Think college dorm rooms,

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but without the TVs, computers
and really annoying roommates.

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Hooke was something
of an underappreciated scientist

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of his day --

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something he brought upon himself,

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as he made the mistake of locking horns

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with one of the most famous
scientists ever, Sir Isaac Newton.

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Remember when I said Hooke
dabbled in many different fields?

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Well, after Newton published
a groundbreaking book

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on how planets move due to gravity,

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Hooke made the claim

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that Newton had been inspired
by Hooke's work in physics.

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Newton, to say the least,
did not like that,

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which sparked a tense
relationship between the two

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that lasted even after Hooke died,

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as quite a bit of Hooke's research --
as well as his only portrait --

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was ... misplaced, due to Newton.

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Much of it was rediscovered,
thankfully, after Newton's time,

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but not his portrait,

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as, sadly, no one knows
what Robert Hooke looked like.

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Fast-forward to the 1800s,

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where two German scientists
discovered something

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that today we might find rather obvious,

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but helped tie together
what we now know as the cell theory.

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The first scientist
was Matthias Schleiden,

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a botanist who liked to study
plants under a microscope.

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From his years of studying
different plant species,

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it finally dawned on him

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that every single plant he had looked at

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were all made of cells.

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At the same time,

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on the other end of Germany
was Theodor Schwann,

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a scientist who not only
studied slides of animal cells

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under the microscope

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and got a special type
of nerve cell named after him,

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but also invented rebreathers
for firefighters,

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and had a kickin' pair of sideburns.

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After studying animal cells for a while,

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he, too, came to the conclusion

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that all animals were made of cells.

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Immediately, he reached out
via snail mail,

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as Twitter had yet to be invented,

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to other scientists working
in the same field with Schleiden,

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who got back to him,

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and the two started working
on the beginnings of the cell theory.

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A bone of contention arose between them.

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As for the last part of the cell theory --

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that cells come from preexisting cells --

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Schleiden didn't exactly
subscribe to that thought,

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as he swore cells came
from free-cell formation,

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where they just kind of spontaneously
crystallized into existence.

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That's when another scientist
named Rudolph Virchow,

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stepped in with research showing
that cells did come from other cells,

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research that was actually --
hmm ... How to put it? --

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"borrowed without permission"

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from a Jewish scientist
by the name of Robert Remak,

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which led to two more feuding scientists.

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Thus, from teeth gunk
to torquing off Newton,

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crystallization to Schwann cells,

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the cell theory came to be
an important part of biology today.

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Some things we know
about science today may seem boring,

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but how we came to know them
is incredibly fascinating.

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So if something bores you,

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dig deeper.

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It's probably got a really weird
story behind it somewhere.