How a humble Dutch merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, became the first person to peer into a world of tiny creatures invisible to the naked eye. Show more Antonie van Leeuwenhoek opened up a whole new ...

Who needs fancy electron microscopes when you’ve got the simple but ingenious hand-held microscope through which microbes were seen for the first time almost 340 years ago. These pictures – of the ...

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 ...