Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Timeline

1. 1632–1654Delft · South HollandBorn in Delft, he went to Amsterdam in his youth to learn commerce, then returned home to deal in cloth and linen, also serving as alderman and land surveyor, laying the economic and leisure foundations for his later amateur scientific research.
2. 1673–1690Delft · South HollandFrom around the 1670s he systematically observed drops of water, dental tartar, and biological tissues with self-made single-lens microscopes, submitting observation reports to the Royal Society from 1673; between 1674 and 1677 he successively described the flow of red blood cells, microorganisms, and sperm, opening an empirical research path into the world invisible to the naked eye.
3. 1690–1723Delft · South HollandIn his later years he continued publishing letters and papers of microscopic observation, with samples covering insects, plants, and human secretions; though without university training, he won the respect of European scholars through precise drawings and repeated observation, still researching in Delft at the age of ninety.