Virchow

Source: TW

The position of Rudolf Virchow is a complicated one from today’s vantage point. He’s widely acknowledged as having taken the foundational work of Schwann and Schleiden, the cell theory, one of the foundations of biology to its conclusion, by ironing out key misconceptions of its founders.

However, his role is clouded by the issue Raspail and Remak. First, Raspail, the French naturalist, likely beat all 3 Germans in proposing the cell theory in a rather complete form. Further, it is believed that while Virchow was deeply involved in investigations of the theory starting from when he was with the great Johannes Mueller, the current evidence indicates that Remak beat him to the key insight converging on Raspail’s idea that a cell had to ultimately come from another cell. Initially, he refused to acknowledge Remak while presenting it as his own hypothesis. Some have proposed that he plagiarized Remak – a common phenomenon in modern science as on this SM. I don’t know if he plagiarized Remak but his non citation seems egregious.