As a child I had read “Microbe Hunters“, by Paul de Kruif, an amazing book that covered the history of bacteriology, starting with Van Leeuwenhoek (first person to see a microbe), Spallanzani (proved that life doesn’t arise spontaneously), Pasteur (microbes are menace), Koch (who identified cause of TB and cholera), Walter Reed (vectors of yellow fever) and Paul Ehrlich( who proved that synthesized organic compounds can kill microbes and thus laid the foundations of pharmaceutical science).
Of all of these pioneers the story of Van Leeuwenhoek was the most interesting. Given that the concept and basic science behind a microscope was known( circa ~1670), after all Robert Hooke had described structures in thin slices of plant leaves which he called “cells”, it was most impressive that a cloth merchant could make microscopes that were unrivaled in their quality and magnification by anything available then, so much so that the Royal Society sent emissaries begging Leeuwenhoek to sell a microscope at any price!
Eclectic Study 