Matthias Mann | Apr 11, 2004 | 6 min read
For nearly 300 years, cell biology has been largely an observational science. Robert Hooke in 1665 saw structures under the microscope that he called cells. Anthony van Leeuwenhoek discovered cellular substructures in 1700, which Robert Brown dubbed 'nuclei' in 1833. Cell biologists have described many other substructures since then, the most prominent among them being the mitochondria, Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, and nucleolus.With the advent of molecular biology, cell biologists we