The Microscope - Hooke and Leuwenhoek

Speaker: Bill Dick

Bill's talk will describe the invention and development of the microscope.  This invention is one of the key early technological advancements for biology, medicine, and science in general.

Bill Dick is a retired physician.  He is a past president of the Scientech Club and our historian.

Program: Monumental Moments: The Microscope – Hooke and Leuwenhoek

Speaker: Bill Dick, MD (retired), Scientech Historian and past Club president

Introduced By: Marty Meisenheimer

Attendance: NESC: 83; Zoom: 28

Guest(s): Nick Strate

Scribe: Bill Dick

Editor: Carl Warner

View a Zoom recording of this talk at: https://www.scientechclubvideos.org/zoom/06162025.mp4

Many science students know of Anton von Leeuwenhoek (AVL), but few know Robert Hooke. Hooke invented the first compound microscopes and AVL perfected them. Think of it! Objects could be seen in detail; and things which could not be seen, such as bacteria, red blood cells and the eye of a fly could now be seen. It amazed all of Europe. It was a landmark in the field of medicine. Robert Hooke was a well-educated polymath. He was an Oxford-educated Englishman.

Magnification dates to the Chinese, of course. Later, an Arab, Al Hassan, wrote about optics. Spectacles came next, in the 1200’s and in the early 1300’s, a Dutch father and son, the Janssens, built an early compound microscope. Hooke built a better one in 1665 and published Micrographia, a book with drawings about the objects that he had seen.

AVL worked in the garment trade in Delft, the Netherlands. His microscopes date back to the 1670’s. He would come to own over 500 microscopes. AVL was largely self-taught and was very secretive about his methods. He kept no workbooks and wrote no books. Visitors came from all over Europe to view things in his microscopes. It was revolutionary! His microscopes were the best. He was known as the Father of Microbiology & Microscopes. AVL was admitted to the Royal Society and bequeathed 25 microscopes to them, of which nine exist today. He was also land surveyor for the Court of Holland and oversaw wine imports. Nice work if you can get it.

Hooke is known as England’s Leonardo. He knew chemistry, physics, geology, biology, astronomy, architecture and city planning. Through his microscope he saw plants, fungi, pollen, seeds, leaves, wood and cork. He also saw mites, fleas, and an eye of a fly and steel objects.

Hooke knew optics and studied planetary motions. He saw the rotations of Mars & Jupiter. He was the assistant to Christopher Wren in the rebuilding of London after the 1666 fire. Hooke believed that fossils were calcified ancient animals. Fossils found at the top of mountains meant that geological movement had occurred. In addition, he predicted biological evolution. Hooke was also a skilled artist and drew what he saw under the microscope. He also played the organ. Hooke is less well known because of his lack of focus (and his disputes about his work). At his death, he owned 5,000 books and had substantial savings, over $1.5 million in today’s dollars.

In 1830, Joseph Lister solved spherical aberration, and of course, he was the father of antisepsis. In 1933, two Russians invented the electron microscope. With it, they proved that the epidemic of 1918-1919 was due to the Influenza virus. In the late 1880’s Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch linked microbes to disease, another landmark in medicine.

Bill Dick