Theodore Schwann and the University of Louvain

Abstract

IT might not be altogether inappropriate at this time when the world of true culture is grieving inconsolably over the destruction of the University of Louvain, to be reminded that the originator of the famous cell—theory, Theodore Schwann (1810–82), was for nine years a professor at that University. To biologists this fact is probably the most interesting association which the mention of Louvain arouses. Schwann vent to Louvain as professor of anatomy in 1838, and left it for a chair at Liège in 1847. It was in 1839 that he gave to the world the call—theory in a treatise, “Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants,” as the title runs in the translation made by Henry Smith in 1847 for the Sydenham Society.