From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek
(24 October 1632 ? 30 August 1723; last name pronounced 'Layvenhook') was a
Dutch
tradesman
and
scientist
from
Delft
, Netherlands. He is best known for his work to improve the
microscope
.
Using his handcrafted microscopes, he was the first to see and describe single
celled
organisms
, which he originally referred to as
animalcules
, and which we now refer to as
microorganisms
. He was also the first to record microscopic observations of
muscle
fibers
,
bacteria
,
spermatozoa
and
blood
flow in small
blood vessels
. Van Leeuwenhoek did not write books, but sent letters to the
Royal Society
in London. The letters were published in the Royal Society's journal
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
.
In his youth van Leeuwenhoek was apprenticed to a
draper
. Later, a
civil service
position allowed him to give time to his hobby: grinding
lenses
and using them to study tiny objects. His simple microscopes were skillfully ground, powerful single lenses capable of high image quality. He looked at
protozoa
in rainwater, pond water and well water. He also looked at bacteria in the human mouth and
intestine
. In 1677, he first described the
spermatozoa
of insects, dogs, and humans.
His observations laid the foundations for the sciences of
bacteriology
and
protozoology
. He was the first to see bacteria,
protists
, spermatozoa, the cell
vacuole
,
blood corpuscles
,
capillaries
, and the structure of muscles and nerves.
- Dobell, Clifford (1960) [1932].
Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his "little animals": being some account of the father of protozoology and bacteriology and his multifarious discoveries in these disciplines
. New York: Dover Publications reprint of original edition by Harcourt, Brace and Company.