Marcello Malpighi
The Italian Malpighi was the first histologist, using thin sections and transmitted light to study plant and animal tissue. He was the first Italian member of the Royal Society, which published a half dozen of his articles in Philosophical Transactions between 1667 (vol 2) and 1684 (vol 14). They also published his 1671 book, Anatomia Plantarum (Plant Anatomy).
Aware of and reacting to each other's work, Malpighi and Leeuwenhoek independently studied wood, blood, and blood vessels, and they had conflicting ideas on reproduction. Malpighi was already an established researcher by the time Leeuwenhoek began publishing, and some of his observations (ex: red blood cells) pre-dated Leeuwenhoek's even though Malpighi did not always accurately identify what he saw. He used a double-lens microscope on the design of Cassini, which did not have the magnifying and resolving power of Leeuwenhoek's single lenses.
