Was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek secretive?
Journal:
FEMS Microbiology Letters
Volume:
366, Issue 16, August 2019
Publisher:
Federation of European Microbiological Societies
Year:
2019
Full title
Was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek secretive? His experiments with insect corneas.
Abstract
It is often claimed that Antoni van Leeuwenhoek was secretive about his methods. However, closer examination of his letters suggests that this reputation was not always deserved. Some letters were not published in the Royal Society Proceedings, and others were edited. This paper describes the repetition of his experiments with the eyes of bees and dragonflies using his own account of his experiments, despite the fact that only one of the four letters was published in the Proceedings.