Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, (1632 – 1723)

In 1675 the Dutch microscopist,  Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, a linen draper from Delft, saw tiny animalcules, as he called them, under his microscope.  What Leeuwenhoek had found were protozoa.  he calculated there were 8,280.000 of these tiny beings in a drop of water- more than the number of people on Holland.  The world teemed with life in ways and numbers that no-one had previously suspected.

“Observing that these creatures did augment into vast numbers but not being able to see them increase in bigness, I began to think whether they might not in a moment, as ‘twere, be composed or put together: but this speculation I leave to others.”

In 1683 Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria - but that was about as far as progress could get for the next century and a half, because of the limitations of microscope technology.  Leeuwenhoek made a new instrument for every one of his experiments and was very secretive about his techniques.

One of Leeuwenhoek's microscopes

A page of Leeuwenhoek's drawings

Bibliography

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything.  Transworld Publishers 2003

Grace Monger and Richard Gliddon eds, The Perpetuation of Life: revised Nuffield biology text 4, Longman 1975

Roy Porter The Greatest Benefit to Mankind Harper Collins 1997

Robert Reid, Microbes and Men, BBC 1974

G. Rattray Taylor, The Science of Life, Thames and Hudson 1963