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Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes
The technique of neutron tomography has, after 350 years, enabled a first look inside the iconic single-lens microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Van Leeuwenhoek’s 17th-century discovery of “animalcules” marks the birth of microbiology. His skillfully self-produced microscope lenses remained unsur...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121416/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33990325 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf2402 |
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author | Cocquyt, Tiemen Zhou, Zhou Plomp, Jeroen van Eijck, Lambert |
author_facet | Cocquyt, Tiemen Zhou, Zhou Plomp, Jeroen van Eijck, Lambert |
author_sort | Cocquyt, Tiemen |
collection | PubMed |
description | The technique of neutron tomography has, after 350 years, enabled a first look inside the iconic single-lens microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Van Leeuwenhoek’s 17th-century discovery of “animalcules” marks the birth of microbiology. His skillfully self-produced microscope lenses remained unsurpassed for over 150 years. Neutron tomography now enabled us to reveal the lens types Van Leeuwenhoek used. We argue that Van Leeuwenhoek’s instruments incorporate some innovations that testify to an awareness of concurrent developments. In particular, our analysis shows that for making his best-performing microscopes, Van Leeuwenhoek deployed a lens-making procedure popularized in 1678 by Robert Hooke. This is notable, as Hooke always wanted to find the secret of Van Leeuwenhoek’s lenses, but never managed to do so. Therefore, Van Leeuwenhoek was far from the isolated scholar he is often claimed to be; rather, his secrecy about his lenses was motivated by an attempt to conceal his indebtedness to Hooke. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8121416 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81214162021-05-19 Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes Cocquyt, Tiemen Zhou, Zhou Plomp, Jeroen van Eijck, Lambert Sci Adv Research Articles The technique of neutron tomography has, after 350 years, enabled a first look inside the iconic single-lens microscopes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Van Leeuwenhoek’s 17th-century discovery of “animalcules” marks the birth of microbiology. His skillfully self-produced microscope lenses remained unsurpassed for over 150 years. Neutron tomography now enabled us to reveal the lens types Van Leeuwenhoek used. We argue that Van Leeuwenhoek’s instruments incorporate some innovations that testify to an awareness of concurrent developments. In particular, our analysis shows that for making his best-performing microscopes, Van Leeuwenhoek deployed a lens-making procedure popularized in 1678 by Robert Hooke. This is notable, as Hooke always wanted to find the secret of Van Leeuwenhoek’s lenses, but never managed to do so. Therefore, Van Leeuwenhoek was far from the isolated scholar he is often claimed to be; rather, his secrecy about his lenses was motivated by an attempt to conceal his indebtedness to Hooke. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021-05-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8121416/ /pubmed/33990325 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf2402 Text en Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Cocquyt, Tiemen Zhou, Zhou Plomp, Jeroen van Eijck, Lambert Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
title | Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
title_full | Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
title_fullStr | Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
title_full_unstemmed | Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
title_short | Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
title_sort | neutron tomography of van leeuwenhoek’s microscopes |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121416/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33990325 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf2402 |
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