Photograph by Sam Murphy
A 1673 VIEW OF THE MICROSCOPIC UNIVERSE
Make your own van Leeuwenhoek microscope.
By Patrick Keeling
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) was a wealthy cloth merchant who lived in the city of Delft, in the Netherlands. He is best known for his pioneering work on microscopy: from 1673 onward he created as many as 500 microscopes, and from these made numerous significant discoveries. It was he who first discovered the existence of singlecelled organisms, a discovery that ironically brought his scientific credibility into question ...
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