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- In the early 19th century, there once lived a Scottish botanist by the name of Robert Brown who is credited with an extremely important discovery in cell theory.
- After serving as a ship’s naturalist on an expedition to Australia, he returned to Great Britain in 1805 with 3000+ exotic plant species, including his newly discovered orchids.
- Over many years, Brown studied the sex life of orchids through their pollen grains, as well as other parts of the plant. Orchids were well-suited to his research, for the species has bigger cells than many other plants.
- ALL CELLS CONTAIN A NUCLEUS!
- In 1831, with a microscope from the Linnaean Society, Brown noticed a distinctive shape within each cell of orchid tissue. Brown noted that, while watching the process of pollen grains fertilizing a plant, there was a “distinct shape” inside each of the plant cells that the pollen could be seen moving in and out of. He proposed that every cell contained one of these “shapes”, and he called them the nucleus.
- To back up his claim, Brown studied the cells of several other plants and came to the same conclusion. A distinct shape, though varying in size, could be seen in the cells of all the plants he viewed.
- Robert Brown’s discovery of the nucleus helped to put together the cell theory, which states that all living organisms (both animals and plants) are composed of cells, and cells come from pre-existing cells.
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