Discovery of Mitochondria Organelle

There is no real single answer regarding who discovered mitochondria. The process of discovery
and identification was a gradual one that has spanned the last century and a half. The first
scientists known to identify the existence of mitochondria were working during the mid-1800s.
In 1857, Albert von Klliker described what he called granules in the cells of muscles. Other
scientists of the era also noticed these granules in other cell types.
The discovery of mitochondria in general came in 1886 when Richard Altman, a cytologist,
identified the organelles using a dye technique, and dubbed them bioblasts. He postulated that
the structures were the basic units of cellular activity. Carl Benda, in 1898, coined the
term mitochondria. He derived the term from the Greek language for the words thread, mitos,
and granule, chondros.
Discovery of Mitochondria Functions
Many more individuals started to work with the organelle over the next few decades, each of
whom discovered an important mitochondrial function within the cell.
In 1912, a German biochemist named Otto Heinrich Warburg hypothesized that an enzyme
within cells enabled the processing of oxygen. He showed that cyanide had an effect on
respiration at the cellular level. Further research was conducted by David Keilin in 1923 to show
how the oxidation state within cytochromes (hemoproteins responsible for electron transport)
was changed during respiration. He later identified the existence of cytochrome c, part of the
inner membrane of mitochondria.

How was the nucleus of an atom discovered?
English physicist Ernest Rutherford is credited with discovering the nucleus in the early 1900s.
Rutherford had a long career in atomic physics, during which he taught many other famous
physicists. He studied radioactivity along with Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, and
through their experiments, they learned much of what we know today about the atom, including
the discovery of the nucleus. Before the nucleus was discovered, it was widely believed that
positive and negative charges were distributed evenly throughout the atom. Rutherford, along
with Hans Geiger and student Ernest Marsden, conducted some interesting tests that proved
otherwise [source: Cambridge].
In one of their most well-known experiments, which took place while Rutherford was a professor
at the University of Manchester, the physicists beamed alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil.
During the experiment, most of the particles passed through the gold foil onto the screen behind
it, but some were deflected. Rutherford determined that the particles that made up the gold foil
must consist mostly of empty space since most of the alpha particles passed through. However,
some regions of the gold must have been too dense to allow the alpha particles through, and this
heavy part of the atom was what Rutherford called the nucleus. He concluded that it was the
nucleus that held most of the atom's mass [source:ThinkQuest].
After Rutherford's discovery in 1911, studies of the nucleus became known as "nuclear physics"
and, eventually, led to the splitting of the atom [source:Cambridge]. Rutherford also used alpha
particles to discover the proton, and one of his co-workers and fellow physicists, James
Chadwick, discovered the neutron.


Discovery of chloroplast:
P.J.Pelletier (1788-1842) cooperated with J.B. Caventou, they named
the green substance chlorophyll in 1818s.Untill 1864,we already knew
chlorophyll was combined by two yellow and two green pigments. Andreas
Franz Wihelm Schimper18561901first used chloroplast in 1885s to
discovered that chloroplast was a combination of stroma and
grana. Discovery of endoplasmic reticulum:
In 1945s, Porter used electron microscope to observe the movement of
cell. He discovered the whole cytoplasm have some structure like net.
Later, he named the structure endoplasmic reticulum and sure that it as a
new cell organelle.