Reflecting Realities – Leeuwenhoek’s Limner and the Engraving of Life infocus #77 March 2025

Historical accounts of Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the microscope pioneer, repeatedly refer to his drawings of microbes and of microscopic structure. In fact, not one of the drawings was made by his hand.

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.288

Born 24 October 1632 in Delft, the Netherlands, he lived in that town all his life and died on 26 August 1723. From the age of forty he laid the groundwork for present-day microscopists with detailed and precise descriptions of the microscopic realm. This programme of research means that, for the first time, we can now reconcile the original drawings with present-day reality.

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