Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, or commonly referred to as the father of microbiology, was born in 1632. He was the first person to study and observe single-celled organisms which furthered knowledge with biology. He saw his first microscope when he was jujst 16 years old. He was at a market when he spotted a simple microscope (which at the time was just a wooden stand with a magnifying glass on it.) He eventually got one of his own and he studied it enough to go on and create a microscope of his own. Many peoople consider him a very unlikely candidate for becoming a scientist. He was from a family of tradesmen and had barely any education, if any at all. He didn't have a university degree either. He made the microscope by placing a small rod of soda lime glass in a flame, then he could pull the hot parts apart to create long whiskers of glass. He would then reinsert an end of the rod back in the fire and create an extremely small glass sphere that was very high quality. The spheres were then used for his microscopes. They were such high quality that it was able to get up to 200x magnification. The old microscopes were only about 20x - 30x. Although he didn't actually invent the microscope, he made a new kind that was so advanced that even today, some microscopes only get up to 400x magnification. 400 years earlier, they were already at 200x. This was his most important contribution to society and it has helped modern technology a lot. He is important to the Renaissance because it allowed their research with cells and organisms to go further. It also helped us know what people know today. He represents the ideals of the Renaissance by showing that every human was made up of millions and millions of cells. Before the microscope, people didn't even know what cells really were. They didn't know what single-celled organisms were or that there are cells in literally everything.

This is a picture of a microscope that Leeuwenhoek had made. As you can see, the lens is very, very small. The old microscope (see under,) was just a rod with a lens. It didn't work that well. The old microscopes were made by Zacharias Janssen.

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