The lost treasures of Leeuwenhoek
In 2009 The Christie’s Auctions in London sold “a highly important Dutch silver microscope (ca 1690)” for a whopping sum of 313,250 GBP, which made it probably the most expensive antique scientific instrument ever sold. For this price one could buy a new Ferrari, or a decent apartment in London. To be clear, this highly important Dutch microscope was only 4x2 cm big, made of two riveted silver plates, several screws and a single lens — a device quite useless for any modern scientific research.
Why was it valued so high? Actually, this price was cheap, if you know what impact the man who made it, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, left in the history of science. Bear with me.
Antony was born in 1632 in Delft. His father was a basket maker, mother was from wealthy brewers. He attended school, then at 16 moved to Amsterdam and became a bookkeeper apprentice in textile shop. After six years of working for his boss there, Anthony returned to Delft, opened his own textile business and married. Over the years he grew his business and connections in the city, holding some cushy municipal jobs such as chamberlain of the Delft city hall, land surveyor, and “wine-gauger” — assessing wine quality and collecting taxes on it’s import for the city.
This time was Dutch Golden Age, when major wars took a break, Amsterdam became the capital of world trade, Dutch East-India Company (actually corporation) was founded, and spices from India were traded like gold. It was also the Renaissance of art and science in Holland, which became the land of free thought and expression. Many European scientists and philosophers moved to Holland from prosecution in their home countries. Art was flourishing, and paintings of many Dutch masters give us an opportunity to glimpse into life at that time. Antony van Leeuwenhoek could well be a friend of Vermeer, who lived in the same town, although there is no direct evidence.
But let’s return to microscopes.
In 1665 (L. was 33) one the most prolific professional scholars of that time, Robert Hooke published a beautiful book Micrographia about the wonders of micro-world, which instantly became best-seller and popularized microscopy across educated people. Hooke describes a multitude of microscopic objects: insects, their eyes and stings, mold, seeds, cork (and coins the word cell), etc. But, remarkably, no protozoa, no single-cell organisms, although he could easily find them in any warm pond. Large protozoa like Paramecium can be even seen with naked eye (up to 0.25 mm long), let alone Hooke’s microscope. Why didn’t he see them? Perhaps he didn’t look carefully enough, or was biased by expectations, so Hooke didn’t notice the greatest wonders and discoveries of microscopic world.
Leeuwenhoek was then little known on the intellectual scene of Europe. If he asked himself “What can I do to make a scientific impact which will last generations?” the right answer would be: Nothing. He lived in times when giants walked the Earth: Newton, Leibniz, Boyle, Hooke, and Huygens were his contemporaries who shattered the pillars of old knowledge and founded what we call modern science. They were polymaths who were making discoveries and inventions at a stunning rate. He was a middle-aged owner of small textile shop and slightly-above-average burger by all measures.
But he probably didn’t care about scientific impact. He was driven by curiosity and sense of wonder. We don’t know when and how he was introduced to microscopy — it could be some party where public was flabbergasted by looking at fleas using some mediocre microscope. After all, microscopy was used at that time mostly for entertainment of the rich. Somehow he got his hands on a microscope, and found his calling: he saw not just fleas, but a whole new world, a reality weird and wonderful. To him, a tiny lens between two metal plates became the door to parallel world. He got obsessed with making microscopes and observing the realm of peculiar little creatures he called “animalcules”, which live around and inside us, unseen and unsuspected. He didn’t have scientific education, knew no languages beside his native Dutch, and wrote what he saw in letters, as if he described his journey.
… this was for me among all the marvels, that I have discovered in nature, the most marvellous, and I must say, that for me, up to now has been no greater pleasure in my eye, as these sights, of so many thousands, of living creatures, to see in a small drop of water, moving through each other, each special creature, having its special motion. (Oct. 9, 1676, source)
He didn’t have dogmas to fight, and no authority to tell him he is wrong, because he wasn’t a scholar. Scientists are too often stuffed with knowledge, opinions, and dogmas. When educated people look at new things, they often don’t get amazed— they assume that it’s an artifact, and maybe someone has already studied it. But our hero had free and curious mind unspoiled by scholarly knowledge.
He had no teachers and no pupils, and kept secret how exactly he made his microscopes. He didn’t even show his best microscopes to the public, or sold any, for a reason:
And when the Landgrave had asked him whether he could obtain some, of his manufacture, he answered with much pride that he never gave any to anybody, nor did he intend to do so: and that if he were ever to submit to that, he would then soon be the slave of everybody; with other expressions of the like sort. When he had shown two or three of his microscopes, he took them away, and went to look for as many others; saying that he did this for fear lest any of them might get mislaid among the beholders, because he didn’t trust people, especially Germans : and he repeated this two or three times. O what a brute!
(Letter of Constantijn Huygens junior, Dobell, p.60)
The microscopes he made magnified up to 300x, which was about 6–10 times better than anything available to other scientists at that time. He was essentially using super-resolution microscopy, which allowed him see things invisible to others.
His letters to the Royal Society of London, translated to English and published, made waves in the scientific scene of the time. He discovered protozoa, bacteria, spermatozoa, red blood cells, blood circulation, muscle fibers. Many of his scientific contemporaries refused to believe his invisible worlds of living creatures in a drop of water — it seemed to defy common sense. When he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society, his response was the most humble:
Gentlemen,
I was quite taken aback to hear that the members of the Roy. Society had been pleased to confer upon me, all undeservedly, so much honour and dignity as to admit me a Fellow of the same most worthy College ; as I first learnt from a letter written by Mr Secretary Thos. Gale, and a bit later through the receipt of a sealed Diploma; whereof both were full of expressions on my behalf that my merits must fall far short of. Under which protest I notwithstanding hold myself most straitly pledged hereby, by unalterable intent and promise, to the Fellows of the said Society, for the signal favour they have shown me, to strive with all my might and main, all my life long, to make myself more worthy of this honour and privilege.Wherewith commending you, most noble Gentlemen,
one and all, to the merciful protection of Almighty God,
I remain, Gentlemen,
Your most humble servant
Antony Leeuwenhoek.
(Dobell, p.49)
He became a sort of celebrity in his home town of Delft. The list of noble visitors included William III of Orange and his wife, Mary II of England, and Tsar Peter The Great, to name a few. Leeuwenhoek was more annoyed than pleased by the visitors, he preferred spending time in solitude, experimenting with microscopes. He continued his microscopy studies and reporting his observations to the Royal Society until the last days of his 91-year long life.
Leeuwenhoek made more than 500 microscopic devices, of them 271 single-lens microscopes, but never sold any. His daughter Maria cared for him until the last days and inherited them. According to his will, microscopes were sold in batch at a city auction, but this happened only after Maria’s own death.
Only 11 Leeuwenhoek’s single-lens microscopes are known as authentic in our days. The rest are gone: some may be lost forever in fires, others may lie in old trash around the world. The latest two were discovered by chance: in 2013, one was found in a collection of silver articles for a doll’s house; in 2014, another was found in the mud dredged from Delft’s canal. Some others may come to surface in future.
Today we have the privilege of retrospective view on impact Leeuwenhoek made in science. He opened the field of microbiology by discovering protozoa and bacteria, and his astute observations challenged the existing primitive theories of reproduction, anatomy, and blood circulation. His microscopes were up to 10x more powerful than those of his scientific peers — an impressive tour-de-force in optical design by a self-taught amateur.
However, after receiving highest praises from his contemporaries for his achievements, the old man never published or patented his method of making the lenses, not trusting anyone, “especially Germans”. It was German Robert Koch who discovered that many bacteria are deadly pathogens, some 150 years later. Who knows — had Leeuwenhoek published and disseminated his microscope design, more people could observe and study bacteria. Koch’s discoveries could have been made sooner by other people, saving millions of lives from anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera. The lack of scholarly education played bad this time for Leeuwenhoek — he kept his research tools to himself and guarded them as trade secret, so humanity could not fully benefit from his discoveries.
For the progress of science, sharing is as important as discovering.
Sources
Lens on Leeuwenhoek, by Prof. D. Anderson.
C. Dobell, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his “Little animals”. New York, 1932.
