Who gave cells their name in the 1600s?

• A. Robert Hooke
• B. Anton van Leeuwenhoek
• C. Matthias Schleiden
• D. Theodore Schwann

Answer: (A)

The name for the basic units of life comes from Robert Hooke. In 1665, he examined a thin slice of cork under a microscope and saw tiny, boxlike compartments that reminded him of the small rooms monks lived in. He called these structures “cellulae” in Latin, which we translate to “cells.” The analogy stuck, and the word has been used to describe the basic units of life ever since, even though he was observing dead plant tissue and wasn’t naming living cells at that moment. Anton van Leeuwenhoek later popularized observations of living cells and microorganisms with better lenses, but he didn’t coin the term. Schleiden and Schwann contributed to forming cell theory centuries later, confirming that cells are the fundamental units of life, but they didn’t introduce the word itself.