Science · Biology

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

1632–1723 · Dutch

Microscopy; microbiology

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was a cloth merchant and minor civic official in Delft who, with no university training, ground tiny single lenses and built hundreds of simple microscopes more powerful than any of his day. In letters to the Royal Society of London from 1673 he described the first microscopic organisms, which he called "animalcules", including protists and bacteria, as well as spermatozoa. He is often called the father of microbiology.

How to spot them

▸Delft draper with home-made single-lens microscopes
▸'Animalcules' seen in pond water, pepper infusions and tooth scrapings
▸Hundreds of letters in Dutch to the Royal Society, which elected him a Fellow in 1680
▸Born in Delft in the same year as the painter Johannes Vermeer (1632)

Key discoveries & works

Discovery of 'animalcules' (microscopic protists) in lake water (1674)

Reported tiny living creatures in water from a lake near Delft, the first recorded observation of free-living protists

First observation of bacteria (1676)

Saw far smaller 'animalcules' in pepper-water infusions, and later (1683) in plaque scraped from teeth

First description of spermatozoa under the microscope (1677)

Described sperm cells, prompted by an observation brought to him by the student Johan Ham

Hand-made single-lens microscopes magnifying over 200 times (from c. 1670)

Tiny brass or silver instruments with a single ground or blown lens; he made several hundred and guarded his methods

Letters to the Royal Society of London (1673–1723)

Around 190 letters, introduced by Reinier de Graaf, many printed in the Philosophical Transactions

Key ideas

Showed a hidden world of microscopic life, laying the foundations of microbiology and protozoology
His observations of tiny organisms reproducing argued against spontaneous generation of small creatures

Quick-fire facts

•Worked as a draper (cloth merchant) in Delft, which may be how he first used magnifying lenses to inspect cloth
•Had no scientific training and knew no Latin; he wrote in Dutch
•Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1680
•Is thought to have been inspired by Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665)
•Was appointed trustee (curator) of the bankrupt estate of the painter Johannes Vermeer after his death in 1675
•Received visitors including Tsar Peter the Great
•Died in Delft in 1723, aged 90

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources

University of California Museum of Paleontology — Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Clifford Dobell — Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His 'Little Animals'