ROBERT HOOKE

discovery.

 

By far, the most famous discovery of Robert Hooke is known as the concept of the cell. Hooke’s natural curious personality and meticulous observations led him to discover what is known today as the cell. This discovery was accordingly recorded in his published masterpiece, also known as Micrographia, published in the year of 1665, soon after he became a geometry professor at Gresham College (‘Biography,” 41). Through the studies of this book alone, Robert Hooke would achieve the infamous, globally scientific claim of the concept of the cell itself. In this book, Hooke meticulously illustrated 60 different objects as viewed under a microscope (Gest, 2). He carefully recorded every detail of these diverse biological specimens. Robert Hooke observed and examined sponges, wood, seaweed, hair, peacock surfaces, leaf surfaces, silkworm eggs, fleas, louses, and the wings and eyes of flies in Micrographia (Gest, 2). As he came to study the structure of a cork, Hooke first referred to cells as “pores or cells” before officially naming the biological term as a “cell (Westfall, 71)." Eventually, this led Hooke to the discovery of the cell through the assistance of his microscope, through which he was able to conclude the observation of the cork comprised of “small chambers (Gest, 2).”