The first known description of the platelet is given by Max Schultze in 1865.

Born at Freiburg in Breisgau (Baden), Schultze had studied medicine at Greifswald and Berlin, and had been appointed extraordinary professor at Halle in 1854 and five years later ordinary professor of anatomy and histology and director of the Anatomical Institute at Bonn.

He had founded, in 1865, and edited the important Archiv für mikroskopische Anatomie, to which he contributes many papers, and he advances the subject generally, by refining on its technical methods.

His name is especially known for his work on the cell theory.

Uniting Félix Dujardin's conception of animal sarcode with Hugo von Mohl's of vegetable protoplasma, he points out their identity, and includes them under the common name of protoplasm, defining the cell as a nucleated mass of protoplasm with or without a cell wall (Das Protoplasma der Rhizopoden und der Pflanzenzellen; ein Beiträg zur Theorie der Zelle, 1863).