On Tuesday 5 February 2013
The father of microscopy, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek of
Holland (1632-1723), started as an apprentice in a dry goods store where
magnifying glasses were used to count the threads in cloth. Anton van
Leeuwenhoek was inspired by the glasses used by drapers to inspect the quality
of cloth. He taught himself new methods for grinding and polishing tiny lenses
of great curvature which gave magnifications up to 270x diameters, the finest
known at that time.
These lenses led to the building of Anton Van
Leeuwenhoek's microscopes considered the first practical microscopes, and the
biological discoveries for which he is famous. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was the
first to see and describe bacteria (1674), yeast plants, the teeming life in a
drop of water, and the circulation of blood corpuscles in capillaries. During a
long life he used his lenses to make pioneer studies on an extraordinary
variety of things, both living and non-living, and reported his findings in
over a hundred letters to the Royal Society of England and the French Academy.
"My work, which I've done for a long time, was
not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving
after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And
therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my
duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be
informed thereof." - Anton Van Leeuwenhoek Letter of June 12, 1716
None of Anton Van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes exist today.
His instruments were made of gold and silver and were sold by his family after
he died, none have been recovered.
