Leeuwenhoek: The First Master of Microscopes

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[paulmillcamp]

Being Dutch myself, the meaning of "pissabed" was quite obvious to me! It's actually still in use in modern Dutch, spelled as pissebed, and its meaning hasn't changed to this day. Great episode!

[Haplo-san]

I love old scientific papers, not just describes the thing they see but also describing the feelings they have in "the most marvelous" way.

[fantasticmicrobes]

Someone seriously needs to make a movie about van Leeuwenhoek! With the birth of the royal society, science was finally taking an evidence-based approach to reasoning. Like, people had just established that unicorns didn’t exist because they hadn’t been observed. Notwithstanding the groundbreaking scientific progress coming out of this group (ever heard of Isaac Newton?), van Leeuwenhoek fiercely guarded his microscopes and had a rocky relationship with these guys for a while. Van Leeuwenhoek was curious and an expert naturalist. He loved bringing his microscopes to parties to show his friends the unseen world. I have no doubt that he has inspired countless people both back then and now to not only see the world in new ways, but also seek to understand it.

[MrTapierwithmustache]

A "pissabed" still has a very similar version used today: "pissebed". Its so similar that I am surprised that he had such a problem finding the meaning of the original.

[VAROOMS]

I remember "discovering" protozoa in a farm pond with a microscope my uncle gave me. I thought I had discovered something new to science, then learned that Leeuwenhoek had beat me to it by about 300 years. lol

[magickpalms]

Hank i know you are busy but your voice is like 70% of why i watch this series

[ZedHeadPhred]

Clifford Dobbell's introduction to his biography of van Leeuwenhoek should be required reading for all students of any sort. Seriously, that gave me the best sort of frisson, right down my spine. When we stop learning, we stop living.

Also, "animalcules" is the most lovely, whimsical name for wee beasties (and not-beasties) ever.

[deomapile]

"The rest, as they say, is microbiology."

[gbsccfig]

Pretty good pronunciation of "Leeuwenhoek". I'm impressed :-)
Anton Verhulst

[robotsongs]

"I have usually of a morning a well-formed stool" will be my next tattoo.

[jasonnikakis]

The dislike is from leewenhoek himself for revealing his work

[gregsurles]

Hank, your voice is like a warm, comfy blanket for my soul.

[Peter_Scheen]

Your pronunciation of van Leewenhoek is nearly perfect. Van in van Leeuwenhoek is the only part that could be better. The a in it is pronounced is in the Ahs and ohs when you are surprised (but very short). I like it when people try to pronounce names correctly.

[Generalth]

I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this, but Hank puts on a surprisingly different voice for these videos. It's so much warmer and closer than how he sounds when presenting for SciShow or waxing contemporaneous on vlogbrothers. I like it!

[StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

While I mainly just wanted to say I am consistently blown away by the quality of the footage on this channel, especially recently, I really appreciate the history that goes along with a lot of that footage. Sometimes that style of presentation makes me feel like I'm along for the ride, asking the same questions that are about to be mentioned, and it makes it feel like I own a tiny part of that discovery, at least in the sense that I'll actually remember a lot of it.

Then there's things like this, where I'm really just too entranced by wiggly things under a lens to be asking too many questions of my own in the moment, but things still manage to stick in ways that they never do as footnotes in a textbook or a bleary-eyed Wikipedia crawl even when I have genuine interest to begin with.

[douglasanderson]

Beautiful video! Leeuwenhoek called them "diertgens" or "little animals". It was Oldenburg who translated "diertgens" as "animalcules". Hence the title of Dobell's biography, "AvL and his 'little animals'", in which he refers to him as Leeuwenhoek (not Van Leeuwenhoek), as do I on the Lens on Leeuwenhoek website.

[JustMeJH]

What a beautiful biography! Very well written.

[LifeinJars]

Isn't it true that he actually invented the microscope to examine the fabric he bought more closely, giving him an advantage in the textile trading industry?

[armyforlife]

This is amazing. I have my first microbiology assignment, it's to describe how Leeuwenhoek's microscope worked. I'm researching more of him. It's fascinating for that period of time.

[jaz]

Thank you so much for labelling some slides "Animalcules" 🦀