2010-06-01 11:13:40
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was an unlikely scientist. He had been born into a family of merchants, had no fortune, did not attend university, and knew no language other than his own, German. With these premises it is not easy to earn the respect of the scientific community, but, despite having everything against him, he managed to be a respected scientist for making some of the most important discoveries in the history of biology: he observed bacteria, sperm cells , red blood cells, algae, protozoa and many other things.
Not belonging to the current scientific elite sometimes has an excessive price, no matter how diligent, observant and intelligent a person is. For a long time, Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) had to carry that stigma. In scientific circles, especially after his death, he was said to be rude and undisciplined, using unorthodox research methods and lacking objectivity. His microscopes were described as “primitive” instruments, and there were many who expressed doubts about his ability to make many of the observations attributed to him. “None of this is true” says the British researcher Brian J. Ford after immersing himself for years among the abundant letters, documents and publications that are kept from Leeuwenhoek at the Royal Society of London.
Apparently, Leeuwenhoek’s interest in the microscopic world was born after reading a German translation of Robert Hook’s book, Micrographia, published in 1665. The book was a true bestseller in its time, in it, Hook showed strange drawings that represented, on an enlarged scale, different parts of insects, lice, sponges, bird feathers, etc. All this he had observed with the best of the microscopes built up to then.
Hook used a compound microscope, invented in 1595, an apparatus that had certain similarities with current ones but, due to technical difficulties at the time, it could only magnify the object of study up to 40 times. Leeuwenhoek instead decided to use his own lenses to observe the tiny world. His microscopes (he built over 500) were simpler than those used by Hook, but much more efficient. Basically, they were magnifying glasses built with very small lenses, but his skill in polishing the lenses was such that he was able to magnify what was observed up to 200 times with them.
In 1673 Leeuwenhoek began sending letters describing what he observed with his microscopes to the newly created Royal Society. The British institution archived his correspondence, written in German, and included an English translation in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. For more than 50 years, those letters were discovering the existence of an extraordinarily diverse microscopic world.
As an example, take an example:
In a letter dated September 17, 1683, Leeuwenhoek reported observations of dental plaque. He collected a small sample of his own teeth and described what he saw under his microscope: “I almost always observed, to my great surprise, that in the white matter removed from my teeth there were a large number of tiny living animalcule. Many of them…showered jerky, rapid movements, darting through the spittle like perch in water. Others were spinning like a top most of the time…and these were the most plentiful.”
Encouraged by the experience, Leeuwenhoek collected samples from other people’s teeth, including his wife and daughter, and proved the existence of the same tiny creatures. But what impressed him most was the study of matter extracted from two old men who had never brushed their teeth. In the mouth of one of them, Leeuwenhoek found “an incredible agglomeration of living animalcule that swam more easily than any he had seen on previous occasions. A part of them writhed, curving their bodies as they advanced… and the rest of the animalcules abounded in such a way that the water seemed to be alive. This was one of the first observations of bacteria.
Listen to the biography of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
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