Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke. Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1666.
In Micrographia, Englishman Robert Hooke (1635-1703) introduced the academic community and general public to the microscopic world. Hooke was a scientist, an inventor in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, and an artist. He devised the compound microscope with an illumination system, which he used to observe the plants and animals illustrated in his text. Credited with coining the biological term “cell,” Hooke noted that the boxlike structures observed in plants, viewed microscopically, reminded him of the cells of a monastery.