Monks and Honeycombs
Robert Hooke's discovery of the cell.

In 1665, Robert Hooke looked at cork through a microscope and saw empty spaces resembling honeycomb compartments or monk cells, coining the term 'cell'! Soon after in the 1660s, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used improved lenses to discover living bacteria, earning him the title 'Father of Microbiology'.
