Anthony+van+Leeuwenhoek

The man that observed with the microscope!
Anthony van Leeuwenhoek (//Lay vuhn hook)// made some of the most important discoveries in the history of biology. Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch amateur scientist but was one was one of the first people to record observations of microscopic life. He provided the first clear descriptions of bacteria.

In 1595 nearly 40 years before Leeuwenhoek was born a compound microscope was invented. (Compound microscopes are microscopes using more than one lens). Leeuwenhoek made microscopes but was not the first to invent them.

Leeuwenhoek was born on October 24, 1632 in Delft, Netherlands. He came from a poor family of merchants. He began to work as a fabric merchant and made is first microscope to inspect the quality of cloth.

In 1673 Leeuwenhoek wrote letters to the Royal Society in London about what he had seen through the microscope. His first letter included that the moving objects he viewed through his microscopes were tiny animals. In 1974 he became the first person to correctly describe red blood cells. Starting in 1676 Leeuwenhoek wrote approximately 30 letters to the Royal Society in London explaining his discovers of bacteria, free-living and parasitic microscopic protists, sperm cells, blood cells of fish, birds, tadpoles, and mammals, including human beings, microscopic nematodes and rotifers. Leeuwenhoek was also interested in the ways animals and plants transport nutrients. In plants, Leeuwenhoek showed how sap moves through a network of channels, or //vessels.// He also revealed the complex structures of roots, stems, and leaves.

Leeuwenhoek made over 500 microscopes with less then ten surviving today. His best surviving microscope magnified things up to 270 times their actual size. Anthony died on August, 30, 1723.