Pioneers in Microbiology

The Human Side of Science

King-Thom Chung, Jong-Kang Liu;;;

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9789813200388
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Microbiology & Molecular Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Pasteurization, penicillin, Koch's postulates, and gene coding. These discoveries and inventions are vital yet commonplace in modern life, but were radical when first introduced to the public and academia. In this book, the life and times of leading pioneers in microbiology are discussed in vivid detail, focusing on the background of each discovery and the process in which they were developed — sometimes by accident or sheer providence.

Contents:

• Agostino M Bassi (1773–1836): Pioneer of Studying Contagious Diseases
• Lister (1827–1912): Pioneer of Antisepsis
• Ferdinand J Cohn (1828–1898): Founder of Bacteriology
• Heinrich A De Bary (1831–1999): Pioneer of Mycology
• Gerhard H Hansen (1841–1912): Pioneer of Leprosy Studies
• Ellie Metchnikoff (1845–1916): Phagocytosis and Immunology
• Walter Reed (1851–1902): Mosaquito and Yellow Fever Virus
• Emile Roux (1953–1933) Diseases Fighter
• David Bruce (1855–1921): Pioneer of Veterinary Microbiology
• Alexandre Yersin (1863–1943): Pioneer of Plague Fighter
• Albert Calmette (1863–1933): Antituberculosis and BCG Vaccination
• Howard Ricketts (1871–1910): Pioneer of Rickettsial Diseases Studies
• Alexander Fleming (1881–1955): Penicillin, First of the Useful Antibiotics
• George Beadle (1903–1989): Pioneer of Biochemical Genetics
• Arnold L Demain (1927–): A Giant of Industrial Microbiology
• Bruce Ames (1928–): Molecular Mutagenesis and Genetic Toxicology
• and other papers

Readership: Readers who are interested in the stories behind important discoveries in microbiology. Biography;Researchers;Discoveries in Microbiology;Robert Hooke;Louis Pasteur;Antonie van Leeuwenhoek;Robert Koch Key Features:

• Each chapter focuses on a microbiologist and his/her discoveries
• Serves as an inspiration for future generations of researchers in the field

Chapter 1

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723): The First Microbiologist

“ . . . from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than other men. . . I have thought in my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof. . . my work springs only from an inclination I have to inquire into the beginnings of created things. . . .”

—Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek
(US Public Domain image)

Introduction

Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) wrote that the ancients of his time used tiny glass globules filled with water as a lens. (If you wish to get an idea of what they saw, take a bacteriological platinum wire loop and dip it in clear water. You will find that it is a perfect lens with considerable magnification.) But the ancients including Archimedes (287–212 BC) and Claudius Ptolemy (100–170 AD) who had some knowledge about light refraction at the surface of glass or water, did not have any knowledge of the action of lenses. It was not until the time of Alhazen (965–1039 AD) that the action of lens was described. In his Optics (Opticase Thesaurus Alhazeni Arabius Basil, Lib. Vii, 1572, pp. 44–45), he says: “If an object is placed in a dense spherical medium of which the curved surface is turned towards the eye and between the eye and the centre of sphere, the object will appear magnified”. Vitello also wrote a book on optics in about 1270, but it is doubtful that Vitello had any real knowledge of optics. Contemporary with Vitellio was Roger Bacon (1219–1292), who described experiments with lenses. From his writing, he seemed to know the real value of lenses. Spectacles were invented probably by that time perhaps by Bacon, but it was stated on the grave of Salvino d’Armato (or spelled Salvino d’Armati (1258–1317)), a nobleman of Florence that he invented spectacles, but kept the secret of their manufacture. It is Alessandro della Spina (–1313) of Pisa, who learnt how to make spectacles (probably from Armati) and made the method known to the public. Giordano da Rivalta (1260–1311), a fellow monk of Spina, said that the art of making spectacles was one of the most useful skills. It was only twenty years since its invention, and he had known the inventor. The use of spectacles and the method of making them began to spread over Europe and led to the invention of the microscope and telescope.

It was certain that the telescope was invented first. Jean Hendrick van Swinden (1746–1823) found evidence that Jacobus Metius (1571–1631), a native of Alkmaar in the Netherlands, applied to the State General for exclusive rights of selling telescopes that he had invented in 1609. Anton Maria Schyrleus de Rheita (1597–1660) in his Oculus Enoch et Eliae (published in 1645, p. 337) ascribed the invention was by Hans Lippershey (1570–1619) in 1608. However, Pierre Borel (1620–1671), physician to the French king, in his De Vero TelescopiiInventore (On the True Inventor of the Telescope, published in 1655) claimed that the invention was Zacharias Janssen (1580–1638), son of Hans Janssen, a spectacle maker of Middleburg, Holland in 1590.

When the telescope was invented, it had immediate practical value. It was useful in war and at sea. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) also made a telescope in 1609. Galileo and Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) were well known in the battle between “science and religion”, as they turned the telescope on the moon, the planets, and the cosmos. For the first time, Galileo observed the satellites of Jupiter and the phases on Venus.

Exploration of the world’s surface required vast outlays of capital, ships, and personnel. Even astronomy was dependent on costly astronomical structures and required coordinated observations and communications between scientists at many locations. The adventures with the microscope usually required only one individual and his trusty microscope! A single person, anywhere, could venture out into a world as unknown as that explored by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) with his three ships and crews.

The microscope opened up vistas as great as any seen by Francis Drake (1540–1596), Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521), and the other navigators, even as overwhelming as the cosmic space revealed by the telescope and astronomy. But microscopic revelations came slowly to the general public and even to scientists — and in a far different manner.

It is also believed that Zacharias Janssen might have made the first microscope. Historian believe that the microscope was an “accidental” discovery, as there was no reason for its use at the time, and the major stimulus to use was probably curiosity. The name “microscope” was given by a physician, Giovanni Faber (or Johann Faber) (1574–1629), who called the new optical tube, a microscope because it allowed the viewer to see minute objects. But there was strong medieval distrust of optical devices as being perhaps a work of evil standing between man and his “God-given” faculties. The cruse and fuzzy images of these microscopes probably reinforced this opinion!

Galileo used his telescope as a microscope and reported seeing “flies which looked as big as lambs and were covered with hair”. He was not able to perfect lenses suitable for satisfactory microscopes. People first questioned what could be seen through the telescope and considered Galileo’s descriptions of moons and planets as “optical illusions”. The mass of evidence finally out weighted these suspicions, but people seriously doubted the first description of microscopic life.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723): The First Microbiologist

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), a merchant in the city of Delft, Holland, typifies the lone microscopist who is able to amaze the world and perplex his contemporaries with descriptions in words and pictures (micrographs) of the microbial universe — not only the species of organisms, but also their environment. He also typifies what we will observe again of microscopists — they may be found in undistinguished circumstances or in great universities.

Leeuwenhoek’s observations were made using simple microscopes, which were simply magnifying lenses. The magnifying lens had been used for research as noted in the preface to Mouffets’s Insectorum sivi Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, a manuscript now a British Museum, written about 1590. It was republished by Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne (1573–1655) in 1634; it is there stated that de Mayerne was accustomed to observing small insects with a magnifying glass.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born on 24 October 1632 in Delft, The Netherlands. His father died when Antonie was five years old; his mother sent him away to school when she remarried in 1640. In school, he learned basic mathematics and physical sciences. It seems Leeuwenhoek was not preparing for one of the learned careers of the day or for the university since he never studied Latin. He left school in 1648 and apprenticed in a dry good store in Amsterdam. In 1653, he returned to Delft, married and sets up his own haberdashery. He was widowed twice and had six children: only one, Maria, lived to adulthood. She took care of him until his death at 91. Before he was 40 years old, he was appointed chamberlain to the sheriff of Delft. His duties were to open, clean, and lock the town’s law offices. He earned his living with haberdasher and chamberlain duties but his hobby of playing with magnifying lenses appeared to take most of his time.

This unknown and uneducated merchant/janitor developed an idiotic love for grinding lenses, which were to examine cloth for quality. He learned to grind and polish tiny lenses, which he mounted in metal plates. He made at least 550 of these in his lifetime. He grounded the best microscope lenses in the world in his day. He also turned his lenses onto everything he could place under them including muscle fiber of a whale, scales of his own skin, rainwater, human saliva, animals’ feces, fly brains, beetle eyes, spider spinnerets, frog skin, fish scales, and so on.

He was a very precise and mulish man. He looked through those lenses again and again. He was laughed at and ridiculed by his neighbors because of his strong love of lenses. Between 1657 and 1677, the newly formed Royal Society of London actively solicited works that “promote natural knowledge”. A corresponding member of the society who lived in Delft, Regnier de Graaf (1641–1673) did not laugh at him. On the contrary, he was amazed at what Leeuwenhoek could see through these lenses. Regnier de Graaf introduced him to the Royal Society of London in 1673. The Royal Society requested Leeuwenhoek to write and tell of his discoveries through these lenses. Leeuwenhoek knew only his native Dutch and wrote in that language in a small and neat handwriting. Leeuwenhoek was fortunate, or we are fortunate that Leeuwenhoek had a friend, Hoogvliet, who helped to translate Leeuwenhoek’s letters into Latin. In the first letter, he described how microbes multiplied in grounded pepper in water, until there were 2,700,000 microbes in a drop of water! Most of the members of Royal Society scoffed, but not all. Robert Hooke (1635–1703) and Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) were commissioned to construct better microscopes (the compound microscope in England would not reveal the bacteria that Leeuwenhoek could see with a single lens!) and see if they could verify Leeuwenhoek’s report. Leeuwenhoek was disturbed by the Royal Society doubters and sent them affidavits from prominent citizens of Delft as well as his calculations in meticulous arithmetic (nearly as accurate as those done by modern microscopists with elaborate equipment). On 15 November 1677, Robert Hooke appeared at a meeting of the Society with his new microscope and animalcules from the ground pepper, which Leeuwenhoek had described. Every one crowded around and peered through the microscope. Leeuwenhoek’s first letter and letters communicated later were published in Philosophical Transactions.

Leeuwenhoek was right. Not long after that, on 8 February 1680, Leeuwenhoek was unanimously elected as a fellow of the Royal Society and was sent a handsome coat of arms of the Society in a silver case. This was a big day for Leeuwenhoek and he wrote that he would serve the society the rest of his life, a promise he kept; he never attended a meeting of the Society for the rest of his life. On his deathbed van Leeuwenhoek asked John Hoogvliet to translate two more letters into Latin as his parting gift to the Society. The Royal Society of London sent a doctor, Samuel Molyneux (1689–1728), to visit him and report on his microscopes. Today, we know that the best of his microscopes, although they were simple lenses, were far superior to the compound microscopes in wide use at the time. They had a resolution of about a millionth of a meter. We believe that Leeuwenhoek had an excellent eyesight.

Leeuwenhoek observed, described, and made micrographs of the major types of bacteria and protozoa. In his 39th letter (1683), Leeuwenhoek described rods, cocci, and spirochetes in scraping from his teeth. He described that there were more animalcules living in the scum on the teeth in a man’s mouth than there are men in the whole kingdom especially in those who didn’t clean their teeth. He computed detailed measurements of the areas, volumes, and numbers of organisms he observed. During his whole life, Leeuwenhoek communicated a total of 375 letters in Dutch to the Royal Society; many of were of great length. Between 1939 and 1983, the Leeuwenhoek letters were translated into English by large committees of Dutch scientists, yield and 11 volumes with English and Dutch texts on opposing pages. These volumes include extensive annotation.

Leeuwenhoek was elected to the French Academy of Science in 1680. Throughout his life, he sent 27 letters to the French Academy for publication (Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 1684) Leeuwenhoek became very famous in his time and was visited by the Queen of England, who went to Holland only to see his microscopes. Peter the Great, of Russia, also called on him. In 1716, the University of Louvain in Belgium honored him with a silver medal engraved with a portrait of him for his celebrated discovery in Natural Philosophy. Before his death, van Leeuwenhoek made 26 lenses mounted in sliver plates. He bequeathed these to his daughter to give to the Society after his death. She did send them but unfortunately, all of van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes have since been lost.

Commentary

Leeuwenhoek never once associated his “wee beasties” with disease. Otherwise, modern medicines would develop much earlier. We may fairly call Leeuwenhoek “The first microbiologist” because he was the first individual to actually culture, see, and describe a large array of microbial life. He actually measured the multiplication of the bugs. What is more amazing is that he published his discoveries. Evidence shows that Leeuwenhoek was aware of the Micrographia published by Robert Hooke. Although Hooke first observed the existence of microorganisms and deserved to be considered a distinguished microscopist, but he did not identify the microorganism.

Leeuwenhoek should be ranked one of the great naturalists and explorers. Leeuwenhoek represents the naturalists who changes human attitudes about nature through written descriptions and illustration — or the explorers who expands the horizons. Leeuwenhoek invented the simple microscope or strictly speaking a magnifying lens and, more importantly, used it to explore uncharted territory. He was a naturalist who took to the field to study nature, as did Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and James Hutton (1726–1797).

There were much progress on the technology of microscopy after Leeuwenhoek. For example, Edward Culpeper (1660–1738) in 1730 put a mirror in the optic axis and helped focus the microscope by sliding one tube in another one. Ernst Abbe (1840–1905) developed condenser and applied an oil immersion technique in 1878. In 1935, Frits Zernike (1888–1966) first developed phase-contrast microscopy. There are many microscope makers all over the world. Magnificent microbial worlds were revealed in great detail; more are still to be discovered. With the recent development of electron microscopy by Ernst A. Ruska (1906–1988) and Max Knoll (1897–1969) in 1932, microcellular constituents and even molecular structures can be visible. What microscopy could do in the past may give a hint of what it might do in the future. Modern developments in microscopy, which is still actively going on, will undoubtedly lead us into a new stage of microbiological research. The refreshing memory of the history of microscopy and the pioneers who discovered microorganisms and studied these organisms are worthwhile indeed.

Suggested Reading

1.van Leeuwenhoek, A. (1677). Concerning little animals observed in rain, well, and snow water, as also in water wherein pepper had laid infused. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1(33): 821–831.

2.van Leeuwenhoek, A. (1684). Microscopical observations about animals in the scurf of the teeth. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 14(159): 568–584.

3.Clay, R. S. and T. H. Court (1985, First edition 1932). The History of the Microscope. The Holland Press, London.

4.de Kruif, P. (1926). Microbe Hunters. Chapter 1, pp.1–24. Harcourt Brace & World, Inc., New York.

5.Gest, H. (2004). The discovery of microorganisms revisited. American Society News 70(6): 269–274.

6.van Leeuwenhoek, A. (1977). The Select Works of Antony van Leeuwenhoek: Containing His Microscopical Discoveries in Many of the Works of Nature. Vol. 1& II. Translated by Samuel Hoole. Arno Press, Inc., New York.

Chapter 2

Robert Hooke (1635–1703): The First to Observe the Existence of Microorganisms

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke
(US Public Domain image)

Introduction

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) played similar roles with the microscope and the opening up of the microbial world. This is significant when we realize the importance of the cellular structure of life and the impact of microbiology on disease and health.

Robert Hooke published his book, Micrographia in 1665. Today, we realize that what Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius did for the telescope, Hooke’s book did for the microscope, although it took longer for his observations to be accepted because of prejudice.

Life of Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke was born in 1635. We know very little about his childhood. He was enrolled as an undergraduate at the Christ Church College at the University of Oxford, but he did not obtain a degree there. Nevertheless, he became associated with a brilliant group of scholars including Christopher Wren (1630–1723) and Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who met regularly to discuss a broad range of scientific problems. In 1662, he was a founding member of the Royal Society and served as “Curator of Experiments”. His duties included conducting “considerable experiments” and d...