In a previous blog, I described the 1873 discovery by Camillo Golgi of a method to visualize neurons and his decades-long debate with co-Nobelist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, which led to our current understanding of neuronal function. All of this work was built in turn upon 'cell theory,' the notion that individual cells represent the basic building blocks of all living things. This is, in a sense, a prequel describing how the German botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden (1804-1881), troubled by periods of melancholy and a number of challenging personality qualities, came to propose this revolutionary way of understanding the role of cells. His story is also a continuance of earlier posts on figures in science, the arts, and politics who have made remarkable contributions in the course of very troubled lives.

The son of a municipal physician in Hamburg, Schleiden obtained a law degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1827 and returned to practice in his hometown. It turned out to be very unsuccessful; he became despondent and ultimately shot himself. Happily, he survived, though marked for life with a conspicuous scar on his forehead, and wisely realized that a change in profession was in order. He began to study medicine and natural science in Göttingen in 1832, as well as botany in Berlin in 1835. He built on the work of the Scottish botanist Robert Brown (as in the ‘Brownian movement’), who had described the nuclei in plant cells. Schleiden came to believe that nuclei were the key component in the embryonic development of cells. Though he erred in his description of how cells are formed, he was prescient in believing that they represent the basic units of plant life. As such, he believed that........

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