After studying medicine in Berlin, Schwann assisted the physiologist Johannes Peter Müller (1834–38). In 1836, while investigating digestive processes, he isolated a substance responsible for digestion in the stomach and named it pepsin, the first enzyme prepared from animal tissue. While professor of physiology at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belg. (1839–48), he observed the formation of yeast spores and concluded that the fermentation of sugar and starch was the result of life processes. He knew Mathias Schleiden (Schleiden, Mathias Jacob) well, and a year after the latter, working at University of Jena, advanced the cell theory for plants, Schwann extended it to animals in his Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants (1839).

At the universities of Leuven and Liège, in Belgium (1849–79), he also investigated muscular contraction and nerve structure, discovering the striated muscle in the upper esophagus and the myelin sheath covering peripheral axons, now termed Schwann cells. He coined the term metabolism for the chemical changes that take place in living tissue, identified the role played by microorganisms in putrefaction, and formulated the basic principles of embryology by observing that the egg is a single cell that eventually develops into a complete organism. His later years were marked by increasing concern with theological issues.