Theodor Schwann
Theodor Schwann ( born December 7, 1810 in Neuss, † January 11, 1882 in Cologne ) was a German physiologist. According to him, the Schwann sheath were named in nerve cells and the Schwann cell. He discovered in 1836 that pepsin and showed in 1839 that animals and plants are composed of cells.
Life
Theodor Schwann was the son of a goldsmith and publisher Leonard Schwann and his wife Elisabeth, née Rottels. After elementary school Theodor Schwann visited the Progymnasium in Neuss, then the Marzellengymnasium in Cologne, where he received in 1829 the Abitur.
At the University of Berlin Schwann studied medicine under John Peter Mueller, who taught many German physiologists of the 19th century. His medical studies he began in 1829 in Bonn, later moving on Würzburg to Berlin. During his time in Würzburg ( circa 1830 ) he was a member of the fraternity Amicita, now again called Germania fraternity. 1836, while he was at the University of Berlin, he discovered the pepsin in the extracts of stomach lining, an enzyme responsible for the digestion. Pepsin was the first enzyme, has been isolated from animal tissue. 1837 showed Schwann that something that causes decay in the air, which is destroyed by heat, the air itself, however, does not fall apart. He also pointed independently by Friedrich Traugott Kützing and Charles Cagniard de la Tour after that microorganisms, yeasts, are responsible for the alcoholic fermentation.
Schwann in 1838 professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and 1848 at the University of Liege. There he found that the fermentation of sugar and starch were the result of life processes. He also explored the muscle contraction and nerve structure. He discovered the striated muscle of the upper esophagus and the myelin sheath of Zusatzaxonen, called Schwann cells. Schwann coined the term " metabolism" to describe the chemical changes that take place in living tissue and formulated the basic principles of embryology by observing that an egg is a single cell that eventually develops into a complete organism.
Schwann developed in 1839 together with Matthias Schleiden the cell theory, which identifies the cell as the basic particles of plants and animals. Schwann and Schleiden recognized that some organisms are unicellular while others are multicellular. They also recognized that membranes and nuclei belong to the general cell properties and described them by comparing the various animal and plant tissues. These observations and the cell theory were " Microscopic Investigations on the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants" summarized in Schwann and published in 1839.
Schwann cells stimulated by his theory, the research in this area continues. Today he is considered the founder of modern histology. Theodor Schwann died at the age of 71 years.
Awards
Memory
In Neuss there Theodor Schwann high school, which was, however, dissolved in 1993 and merged with the Marie- Curie -Gymnasium of the city of Neuss. In the buildings of the old Theodor Schwann school the first comprehensive schools of the city of Neuss Janusz Korczak School took their stay. Today, there are still a large seated statue in Neuss's city center, which was built in the early 20th century and is reminiscent of the great son of the city. His birthplace is preserved and a street in Neuss was named after him. Since February 2008, the further education college of the city of Neuss bears the name of the researcher. It is Theodor Schwann College today. Since October 2011, there are in the Göttingen Schwann - Schleiden Research Center for Molecular Cell Biology. The German Society of Neuropathology and Neuroanatomy ( DGNN ) awards since 2003, Theodor Schwann Award for outstanding contributions to their annual congresses.