Matthias Schleiden is credited, along with Theodor Schwann, with articulating the cell theory. Born in Hamburg, he began his career as a lawyer. He met with no great success in law, and, becoming increasingly depressed, attempted suicide. After recovering from the failed attempt, he returned to school to study medicine, specializing in botany.
Schleiden served as a professor first at Jena and later at Dorpat, then resigned and moved frequently from town to town until he died in 1881. Possibly as a result of his previous career, Schleiden was impulsive, sharp and scornful of his opposition. He rejected the botanist as a glorified scientific librarian, opting for a focus on the anatomy and physiology of plants. "Most people of the world, even the most enlightened," he said, "are still in the habit of regarding the botanist as a dealer in barbarous Latin names, as a man who gathers flowers, names them, dries them, and wraps them in paper, and all of whose wisdom consists in determining and classifying this hay which he has collected with such great pains."
Schleiden's chief contribution to the cell theory was elaborated in an 1838 essay on the origins of the cell. First he concluded that plants structure was based on cells and that these cells were created in a common fashion. Schleiden argued that the cell developed from the growth of the nucleus, which he called the "cytoblast". He believed--and Schwann accepted his position--that the nucleus was spontaneously generated out of the cytoplasm or other unformed organic substances. Once the cell was fully formed, Schleiden believed, the nucleus dissolved.
That theory of cell formation was refuted by Robert Remak in 1852, who insisted--as we now understand--that cells are created by the division of other cells.
Despite its flaws, Schleiden's paper was extremely important to the world of biology. Firstly, his conclusion that plants consist entirely of cells or cell products focused attention on the cell as the basic unit of living organisms. Secondly, what Schleiden lacked in rigorous scientific foundation he made up for in forceful argument and ardent conclusions which, while many were later found to be wrong, laid the foundation for Schwann's broader, more comprehensive work on the cell theory. Together their work produced one of the most critical biological developments of their time. Schleiden and Schwann wedded empirical microscopical observations with the more speculative conclusions of natural philosophers to create a unifying theory on the structural similarity of plants and animals.
Matthias Schleiden also published a textbook on botany in 1842, outlining some of his own theories on natural science and criticizing other botanists of the age. Much of the book repeated general theories of the time, including his own work on cells, but it did attempt in its methodology to initiate comparitive investigations into plant evolution.
After his initial foray into cell theory, however, Schleiden did not pursue it to any great degree.
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