Cells were the first described by a British scientist,

Robert Hooke:

In 1665. He used his self-made light microscope to examine a thin slice of cork. Hooke observed a “Honeycomb” of tiny empty compartments. He called the compartments in the cork “cellular”. His term has come to as cells. The First living cells were observed a few years later by the Dutch naturalist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek he observed tiny organisms (from Pond water) under his microscope and called them “animalcules”