Cells, which were once invisible to the naked eye, were first seen in 17th century Europe with the invention of the compound microscope. Robert Hooke was the first person to term the building block of all living organisms as “cells” after looking at cork. [Source: Wikipedia]
Cells had been discovered by Hooke in 1655.
The cell theory was formulated by the German scientists Schleiden, Schwann, and Virchow between 1838 and 1855, so Darwin would have at least been aware of the cell theory.
However, still very little was known about the cells when Darwin formulated his theory.
- Darwin formulated his bold theory in private in 1837–39, after returning from a voyage around the world aboard HMS Beagle, but it was not until two decades later that he finally gave it full public expression in On the Origin of Species(1859)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Darwin
Scientists in Darwin’s Day Did Not Grasp the Complexity of the Cell; Not Even Close
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Gregor Mendel published his “genetics” results and conclusions in 1866, 7 years after Darwin’s main theory had been published.
DNA wasn’t discovered until 1869 and wasn’t identified as the material of heredity until 1944, when Avery showed that Griffith’s transforming principle was in fact DNA.
Common Design 