From Guy Cox, Sydney, Australia
I have to disagree with Levitt on one point. In my field, cell biology, he claims that the interior of the cell, the cytoplasm, was believed to be just a “biochemical bog” a century ago. But chloroplasts, organelles that carry out photosynthesis in plant cells, were discovered far earlier than that. Mitochondria, the so-called powerhouses of the cell, were recognised in 1857 and the Golgi apparatus in 1897. In other words, by the end of the 19th century – well before 1923 – we knew that the cell had specific compartments for specific functions inside it – far from a biochemical bog.
