16. PERCEPTION – The Perception of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
Today, the best microbiologists in the world are awarded the Leeuwenhoek Medal to recognize their excellence in the field of microbiology. You can also visit Micropia, the first museum dedicated to the microbial world, near Leeuwenhoek’s hometown in Holland. Modern microbiologists can see things thousands of times smaller than Leeuwenhoek ever imagined possible. We continue to dis- cover the unthinkable at the smallest of scales: Human skin flakes are the main ingredient in common dust. Eight-legged microorgan- isms live by the dozens in your eyebrows and by the hundreds in your pillow. There are more bacteria in the human body than there are body cells, by a count of 39 trillion to 30 trillion. All told, your body is home to one hundred trillion microscopic life forms called microbes.We call this collection of microorganisms our microbiota. Leeuwenhoek would smile if he saw today’s unbelievably tiny machines that explore and repair the microscopic world. He’d marvel at wireless cameras attached to the backs of insects searching for survivors in damaged buildings. He’d be awed by nanorobots — machines built from individual atoms and much smaller than the period at the end of this sentence — floating through the bloodstream repairing cells. The genius and impact of Leeuwenhoek are summed up best by one of today’s leading scientists who wrote, “More than being the first to see this unimagined world of ‘animalcules.’ He was the first even to think of looking.”
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