Matthias Jakob Schleiden

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Die Entwickelung der Meduse ("The Development of the Medusas"), in Schleiden's Das Meer

Matthias Jakob Schleiden (April 5, 1804 - June 23, 1881) was a German botanist and co-founder of cell theory. He was born in Hamburg, Germany. Schleiden was educated at Heidelberg and practiced law in Hamburg but soon developed his hobby of botany into a full-time pursuit. Schleiden preferred to study plant structure under the microscope. While as professor of botany at the University of Jena, he wrote Contributions to Phytogenesis (1838), in which he stated that the different parts of the plant organism are composed of cells. Thus, Schleiden became the first to formulate what was then an informal belief as a principle of biology equal in importance to the atomic theory of chemistry. He also recognised the importance of the cell nucleus, discovered in 1831 by the Scottish botanist Robert Brown,<ref>Trisha Creekmore. The Science Channel :: 100 Greatest Discoveries: Biology. Discovery Communications. Retrieved on 2006-10-17.</ref> and sensed its connection with cell division. Schleiden was one of the first German biologists to accept Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He became professor of botany at the University of Tartu (then Dorpat, in what is today Estonia) in 1863.