Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek | Timeline

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek (24 October 1632 – 26 August 1723) was a Dutch businessman, scientist, and one of the notable representatives of the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and often considered to be the first acknowledged microscopist and microbiologist. Van Leeuwenhoek is best known for his pioneering work in the field of microscopy and for his contributions toward the establishment of microbiology as a scientific discipline. (Intro from Wikipedia)

October 24, 1632 - Delft, Netherlands - Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek is born

January(?) 1(?), 1639 - Warmond, near Leiden - After his father's death, Van Leeuwenhoek is sent to grammar school

January(?) (1), 1648 - Amsterdam - 16-year old Van Leeuwenhoek becomes a bookkeeper's apprentice at a linen-draper shop

July 29, 1654 - Amsterdam - Van Leeuwenhoek marries Barbara de Mey =(START)

August(?) 1(?), 1654 - Delft - Van Leeuwenhoek opens a draper's shop

January(?) 1(?), 1660 - Delft - Van Leeuwenhoek takes the lucrative job of Chamberlain for the assembly chamber of the Delft Sheriffs in the City Hall

January(?) 1(?), 1666 - Delft - Barbara de Mey dies

January(?) 1(?), 1668 - Gravesend | Rochester, Kent - First foreign trip

January(?) 1(?), 1669 - Delft - Van Leeuwenhoek is appointed as a land surveyor by the Court of Holland, which he combines with another municipal job - being the official "wine-gauger" of Delft and in charge of the city wine imports and taxation

January(?) 1(?), 1671 - Delft - Van Leeuwenhoek begins developing the idea of the glasses used by drapers to inspect the quality of cloth, he constructed his first simple microscopes of magnifying glasses, consisting of a minute lens, ground by hand from a globule of glass, clamped between two small perforated metal plates. To this apparatus he fixed a specimen holder that revolved in three planes.

January 25, 1671 - Delft - Van Leeuwenhoek marries Cornelia Swalmius

September 7, 1674 - Delft - Letter describing observations on lake water, including an excellent description of the green charophyte alga "Spirogyra"

January(?) 1(?), 1676 - Delft - Discovery of Bacteria  (e.g., large Selenomonads from the human mouth)
November 7, 1676 - Delft - Letter to Constantijn Huygens

November 1(?), 1677 - Delft - Discovery of Spermatozoa
December 26, 1678 - Delft - Letter to Constantijn Huygens
May 21, 1679 - Delft - Letter to Constantijn Huygens

January 12, 1680 - Delft - Letter to the Royal Society describing the elements that make up several kinds of wood

February 1(?), 1680 - Delft - In London, Van Leeuwenhoek is elected to the Royal Society on the nomination of William Croone, a then-prominent physician. Van Leeuwenhoek was "taken aback" by the nomination, which he considered a high honor, although he did not attend the induction ceremony in London, nor did he ever attend a Royal Society meeting

January(?) 1(?), 1682 - Delft - Discovery of the banded pattern of muscular fibers

September 17, 1683 - Delft - Leeuwenhoek writes to the Royal Society about his observations on the plaque between his own teeth

January(?) 1(?), 1687 - Delft - Apparently , Leeuwenhoek discovers modern coffee, by roasting the bean, pressing it and boiling it with water

January(?) 1(?), 1694 - Delft - Cornelia Swalmius dies

January(?) 1(?), 1698 - Antwerp - Visit to Jesuit scholar Daniel Papenbroek

April(?) 1(?), 1698 - River Schie, outside Delft - Van Leeuwenhoek is invited to visit the Tsar Peter the Great on his boat. On this occasion van Leeuwenhoek presented the Tsar an "eel-viewer", so Peter could study blood circulation whenever he wanted

December 25, 1702 - Delft - Letter describing many protists, including this ciliate, "Vorticella"

October 26, 1723 - Delft - Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek dies, aged 90 =(END)