A Dutch fabric seller's homemade microscope made him the first person to ever see a microorganism—a discovery of almost incalculable significance to human health and our understanding of life on this planet.
“It almost seems as if Van Leeuwenhoek knew that a new microworld was to unfold,” Cocquyt told me. One of his scientific rivals, Johannes Hudde, later said, “isn't it surprising that we never had the creativity to use these ball lenses to observe little things against the daylight, and that an uneducated and ignorant man such as Van Leeuwenhoek had to be the one to teach this to us.
His obsession with magnifying lenses began sometime in his mid-thirties. How he came upon it isn’t known. His writings never touch on its origins. Perhaps, as many have speculated, he started using lenses to inspect the quality of his cloth. Or maybe he got caught up in the public mania for microscopes following the publication of Hooke’s.
On September 7, 1674, Van Leeuwenhoek sent the letter reporting his shocking discovery: Within an otherwise unremarkable drop of pond water he had seen “glittering” creatures a thousand times smaller than any animal he had previously observed.
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