Theodor Schwann
Theodor Schwann was born near Düsseldorf in 1810. He studied philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg and finally Berlin, where he graduated in 1834 as a doctor of medicine with a thesis on the role of oxygen in the development of the chicken embryo. Until 1838, he was assistant to the physiologist Johannes Peter Müller at the Berlin Anatomical Museum.
I
n 1839, criticized for his work on the role of microorganisms in fermentation, he left Germany for Belgium. He was first welcomed at the University of Louvain (where he taught anatomy until 1847), then in 1848 at the University of Liège, where he taught anatomy, embryology and physiology for 30 years.
It was during his time in Berlin that Schwann carried out most of the research that would make him famous, including all the observations on which he based his cellular theory. But as a deeply religious man, he was to be disturbed by his own discoveries, which rejected any possibility of the "vitalist force" or spontaneous generation hitherto accepted. In Liège, he finally had a laboratory where he could carry out all the experiments he wished... but Schwann, who seemed to be going through a crisis of mysticism that would stay with him until his death, turned away from fundamental research in favor of applied research (invention of his autonomous breathing apparatus).
Retired in 1879, he returned to Germany, where he died in 1882.
