Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
Summary
- 1632 - 1723
- Dutch microbiologiest and microscopist who was largely self-taught
Details
- He had many microscopes that he made himself and looked at everything and anything.
- He was a contemporary of vermeer, and likely they knew each other
- He regularly wrote letters to the Royal Society explaining what he had discovered, by the time he had died he had written 560 such letters to the Royal Society and other scientific institutions
- His description of single-celled organisms was met wtih scepticism in spite of his reputation for quality observation
- he built microscopes with a magnification of up to 500 even though he was an amatuer
References
Quotes
The science of sperm began in 1677, when Dutch microbiologist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek looked through one of his 500 homemade microscopes and saw what he called "semen animals". He concluded, in 1683, that it wasn't the egg that contained the miniature and entire human, as previously believed, but that man comes "from an animalcule in the masculine seed". By 1685, he had decided that each spermatozoon contains an entire miniature person, complete with its own "living soul".
Related
- Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind - Albert Einstein
- Difference between science and engineering
- The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science - Albert Einstein
- How to produce exceptional art - Endless curiosity, observation, and a great amount of joy in the thing - George Grosz