Gest Howard
Department of Biology and History & Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Notes Rec R Soc Lond. 2004 May;58(2):187-201. doi: 10.1098/rsnr.2004.0055.
The existence of microscopic organisms was discovered during the period 1665-83 by two Fellows of The Royal Society, Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. In Micrographia (1665), Hooke presented the first published depiction of a microganism, the microfungus Mucor. Later, Leeuwenhoek observed and described microscopic protozoa and bacteria. These important revelations were made possible by the ingenuity of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek in fabricating and using simple microscopes that magnified objects from about 25-fold to 250-fold. After a lapse of more than 150 years, microscopy became the backbone of our understanding of the roles of microbes in the causation of infectious diseases and the recycling of chemical elements in the biosphere.
1665年至1683年间,英国皇家学会的两位会员罗伯特·胡克和安东尼·范·列文虎克发现了微生物的存在。在《显微图谱》(1665年)中,胡克首次发表了对一种微生物——微真菌毛霉的描绘。后来,列文虎克观察并描述了微观原生动物和细菌。胡克和列文虎克凭借其独创性制造并使用了能将物体放大约25倍至250倍的简单显微镜,才使得这些重要发现成为可能。在经过150多年后,显微镜学成为了我们理解微生物在传染病病因以及生物圈中化学元素循环所起作用的支柱。