uwmspeccoll: Science SaturdayToday we return to the works of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek with two titles
uwmspeccoll: Science SaturdayToday we return to the works of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek with two titles bound in one book: Arcana naturae and Antonii van Leeuwenhoek Continuatio Arcanorum naturae detectorum published by Henrik van Kroonevelt in the Netherlands in 1697. The books are a series of letters about various experiments.Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was a Dutch tradesman, civic official, and self-taught scientist who is considered the father of microbiology. His discovery of microorganisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye was groundbreaking in humanity’s understanding of the natural world. Leeuwenhoek was inspired by Robert Hooke’s Micrographia published in 1665, which contained giant engravings of enlarged fleas, lice, bees, mold, and other curious things seen under a microscope. Leeuwenhoek set to work developing a microscope for himself based on the one described by Robert Hooke in Micrographia, but made a simpler design that had one very small lens that could magnify up to 300 times. This was crucial in his studies of lake water and the discovery of the small microorganisms living in it. The first image depicts Leeuwenhoek’s Earth rotation experiment in which he placed a lead ball in a water filled globe with pieces of wax to represent clouds. It was meant to demonstrate that the Earth rotated on its axis instead of the universe revolving around the Earth. The experiment did not take into account the laws of gravity and mechanics which were introduced by Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) published in 1687.View other posts about Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.View other Science Saturday posts.–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern -- source link