infocus #68 December 2022 Seeing what Leeuwenhoek saw

Friday 26 August 2023 marks the tercentenary of the death of Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the founder of microbiology. After three centuries, you might think that everything about his life and work has long since been discovered, but mysteries remain.

10.22443/rms.inf.1.240

Even his name is controversial: he was christened Thonis, not Antony, and many people still spell his name Antoni though Leeuwenhoek’s biographer Clifford Dobell pointed out in 1932 that the spelling in Dutch Antonij can be rendered only as Antony in English. American scholars invented Anton, a convention unknown in Europe, and Antonie – not a name he’d have recognised – occurs in numerous standard sources, including Wikipedia, the Science Museum, and even Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is said that Leeuwenhoek himself decided to add ‘van’ to give his name higher social status, though his uncle was using van Leeuwenhoek as the family surname back in 1628.

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Author

Brian J Ford

Fellow of Cardiff University, Cardiff University

Brian J Ford is a leading Leeuwenhoek scholar and has published many books on microscopy. His research papers have appeared in publications including Nature, the British Medical Journal, Cell, and Scientific American. He joined the RMS over fifty years ago and was recently elected an Honorary Fellow of the Society. He was recently awarded the Ernst Abbe Medal by the New York Microscopical Society and was an award-winner in the 2022 Nikon Small World competition.