Anton von LeeuwenhoekThe first microscopes

Van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of bacteria

“ van Leeuwenhoek was proud of his clean teeth and described his regimen for keeping them in that

condition in his letter of 17 September 1683. Each morning he rubbed his teeth, using salt as an

abrasive, and then rinsed his mouth with water. After eating he picked his teeth with a toothpick and then rubbed them well with a piece of cloth. He was well satisfied with his regimen and commented that few

people of his age had such clean and white teeth. He was then just 5 weeks short of his 51st birthday.

Despite his thorough regimen, on examining his teeth with a magnifying mirror he found that they were not as clean as he

thought:

(Not his teeth, just a picture)

"Yet by doing so my teeth are not clean, for when I look at them with a magnifying

mirror there remains or grows between some of the molars and teeth a little white

matter, about as thick as batter. ...

Although the consistency of the batter-Iike matter prevented good microscopic observations, van Leeuwenhoek's suspicion was aroused as to the possibility that living organisms were present in the white matter.

He then mixed some white matter with clean rainwater, after determining that the water was free of little animals. ....Microscopic examination revealed that the preparations contained "many very small living animals, which moved veryprettily"

On this occasion van Leeuwenhoek made drawings of the organisms, which are now reproduced in virtually all introductory microbiology books and also in many higher-level books.”

from Bardell, D. (1982) The role of the sense of taste and clean teeth in the discovery of bacteria by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Microbiological Reviews 47:121-126.

Anton van Leeuwenhoek (he was Dutch) was the first person to use a microscope to study nature

• He used a simple light microscope (has only one lens – similar to a magnifying glass)

• He observed the microscopic organisms in pond water

• Dutch businessman Anton van Leeuwenhoek (lay-vuhn-hook) became one of the first people to use a microscope to study nature. Using only a single powerful lens, van Leeuwenhoek crafted instruments that could produce magnified images of very small objects. His simple microscope enabled him to see things that no one had ever seen before. He was the first person, for example, to see tiny living organisms in a drop of water. In 1674 Van Leeuwenhoek carefully observed the living things in pond water and made detailed drawings of each kind of organism. He called these organisms animalcules.

von Leeuwenhoek’ microscope

Anton von Leeuwenhoek

• Born: October 24, 1632• Died: August 30, 1723• He is known as the “Father of

Microscopy.”

Robert Hooke

Born: July 18, 1635Died: March 3, 1703

Wrote and published “Micrographia”

Known as the “English Father of Microscopy”

Robert Hooke

• Used a compound microscope to look at cork• From this cork he coined the term cells, as the

cork looked like monastery quarters.

Contributions:- He observed pieces of cork from the

bark of a cork tree under the microscope. - His observations led him to coin the word “cell.”

- “Cell”- means little rooms in Latin- He compared the small boxes to the

small rooms that monks lived in.