Why is leeuwenhoek famous?

Leeuwenhoek is known to have made over 500 "microscopes," of which fewer than ten have survived to the present day. In basic design, probably all of Leeuwenhoek's instruments -- certainly all the ones that are known -- were simply powerful magnifying glasses, not compound microscopes of the type used today. A drawing of one of Leeuwenhoek's "microscopes" is shown at the left. Compared to modern microscopes, it is an extremely simple device, using only one lens, mounted in a tiny hole in the brass plate that makes up the body of the instrument. The specimen was mounted on the sharp point that sticks up in front of the lens, and its position and focus could be adjusted by turning the two screws. The entire instrument was only 3-4 inches long, and had to be held up close to the eye; it required good lighting and great patience to use.

Compound microscopes (that is, microscopes using more than one lens) had been invented around 1595, nearly forty years before Leeuwenhoek was born. Several of Leeuwenhoek's predecessors and contemporaries, notably Robert Hooke in England and Jan Swammerdam in the Netherlands, had built compound microscopes and were making important discoveries with them. These were much more similar to the microscopes in use today. Thus, although Leeuwenhoek is sometimes called "the inventor of the microscope," he was no such thing.

However, because of various technical difficulties in building them, early compound microscopes were not practical for magnifying objects more than about twenty or thirty times natural size. Leeuwenhoek's skill at grinding lenses, together with his naturally acute eyesight and great care in adjusting the lighting where he worked, enabled him to build microscopes that magnified over 200 times, with clearer and brighter images than any of his colleagues could achieve. What further distinguished him was his curiosity to observe almost anything that could be placed under his lenses, and his care in describing what he saw. Although he himself could not draw well, he hired an illustrator to prepare drawings of the things he saw, to accompany his written descriptions. Most of his descriptions of microorganisms are instantly recognizable.

In 1673, Leeuwenhoek began writing letters to the newly-formed Royal Society of London, describing what he had seen with his microscopes -- his first letter contained some observations on the stings of bees. For the next fifty years he corresponded with the Royal Society; his letters, written in Dutch, were translated into English or Latin and printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and often reprinted separately. To give some of the flavor of his discoveries, we present extracts from his observations, together with modern pictures of the organisms that Leeuwenhoek saw.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/leeuwenhoek.html

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