Theodor Schwann Inventor of Cell Theory

Biography of Theodor Schwann

Early Life

Theodor Schwann was a biologist, who was born on 7^th December, 1810 in Neuss which is a city of Germany. He was son of such a father who was a goldsmith. Theodor Schwann was very intellectual and prolific from very start of his life. In very young age, his interests were not like other common Childs and instead of it he used to tinker with mechanical instruments and devices. He studied at the Saint Petersburg school for his earlier education and after that he was enrolled in University of Bonn. He earned a degree in medicine from there. On the other hand, he also had the experience of studying at other universities e.g. University of Wurzburg and University of Berlin.

Achievements

Theodor Schwann completed his education in year of 1834. Soon after completion of his education, he was offered a job at Berlin museum of anatomy. He accepted this offer and started job there just because he was very interested in biology and Berlin anatomy museum was one of the largest museums of anatomy of the world at that time. During his job over there, he studied the anatomy practically in number of ways after conducting many experiments in lab of that museum.

Contributions

After that he started his work personally because he wanted to know the biology in depth. Once during his research and experimentation, he found the digestive enzyme which is named as pepsin. He was no limited to anatomy or any other single branch of biology and instead of it he was exploring every branch of biology. Continuing his work, he conducted some experiments on fermentation and studied the muscle movement of humans. After this study, he stated different ideas about muscles e.g. biceps relaxation and triceps contraction while triceps relaxation and biceps contraction.

Inventor of Cell theory

Keeping in view the work of Theodor Schwann, the University of Leuven offered him the post of a professor in department of biology and as a result he joined that university in Belgium in 1838. He was the person who found the organic nature of yeast and that how does it formed. His other prolific works include the metabolism finding which includes about chemical reactions which are taking place in our body. Schwann was the person who proposed the cell theory in detail in 1839 and that is why he is called as the father of Histology which is the study of cells and tissues of the organisms.

Death

Schwann was facing some theological issues in his final years of life but he did not lose hope and continued to study the cell biology until he died. He died in year of 1882 on January 11 in the age of almost 72 years.