Abstract
OF all the great naturalists of the past, Leeuwenhoek occupies the unique and anomalous position of being the most frequently quoted and at the same time the least appreciated and understood. An estimate of his work which is commonly expressed and accepted, even by those who have devoted some attention to the history of biology, is that he was a superficial dabbler who had no conception of scientific methods, but who hurried from one topic to another without attempting to exhaust any one of them; and that if he made important discoveries it was easy to do so, since he was early in the field, and one of the first to exploit an important new means of investigation. He is in fact compared unfavourably with his great contemporaries Swammerdam and Malpighi, both of whom successfully completed solid pieces of research involving concentrated and prolonged attention to the points at issue.
Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his “Little Animals”: being some Account of the Father of Protozoology and Bacteriology and his Multifarious Discoveries in these Disciplines.
Collected, translated, and edited from his Printed Works, Unpublished Manuscripts, and Contemporary Records, by Clifford Dobell. Published on the 300th Anniversary of his Birth. Pp. vii + 435 + 32 plates. (London: John Bale, Sons and Danielsson, Ltd., 1932.) 3ls. 6d. net.
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Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his “Little Animals”: being some Account of the Father of Protozoology and Bacteriology and his Multifarious Discoveries in these Disciplines . Nature 130, 679–680 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130679a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130679a0
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