Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) was a Dutch scientist born at Delft. After an apprenticeship at a linen-draper's in Amsterdam, he opened his own shop in Delft in 1654 and became a land surveyor in 1669.

Largely self-taught, he took up lens grinding and in the 1670s built single-lens microscopes achieving magnifications far beyond earlier lenses. He was the first to describe bacteria, protozoa, sperm cells and blood corpuscles, reporting his findings in some 560 letters to the Royal Society. He died at Delft in 1723, a founder of microbiology.