With his simple, yet extremely specialised microscope, Van Leeuwenhoek saw what nobody had seen before – or even could have seen. It was another 150 years before others succeeded in building a ...

In the late 17th century, a Dutch draper and self-taught scientist named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek earned renown for building some of the best microscopes available at a time when the instrument was ...

One of the thrilling aspects of scientific discovery is that it can come from almost anywhere, and almost anyone. Few individuals exemplify this like Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who, despite having ...

Henry Baker drew this illustration of van Leeuwenhoek's microscopes in 1756. 1683: Anton van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to Britain's Royal Society describing the "animalcules" he observed under ...

Leeuwenhoek made a variety of microscopes by grinding his own lenses. Some could magnify by a factor of 270. He noticed tiny single-cell creatures in pond water and called them ‘animalcules’.

One of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes. Photo: Jeroen Rouwkema via Wikimedia Commons. One of the mysteries of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s revolutionary microscopes has been revealed after 300 years, ...

But Ford has looked again at the capabilities of some of Leeuwenhoek's microscopes, ... These simple microscopes were harder to make and use than the more familiar two-lens compound microscope, ...

To understand quite how game-changing Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries were, ... and other optical instruments, such as simple telescopes and microscopes, were rarer still.

These simple microscopes were harder to make and use than the more familiar two-lens compound microscope, ... when he was tasked with reproducing Leeuwenhoek's results.