Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18858

    Spermatozoon

    Date
    1699
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    Creator - Organisation
    The Royal Society, Publisher
    Object type
    Article identifier
    Material
    Technique
    Subject
    Biology
       > Anatomy
    Biology
       > Natural history
    Physics
       > Optics
          > Microscopy
    Description
    Three specimens of human spermatozoon as observed through a microscope by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek.

    Illustrations to ‘Part of a letter from Mr. Leuvenhook, dated June 9th. 1699. concerning the animalcula in semine humano, &c’ in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 21, issue 255 (August 1699). In this article, Leeuwenhoek notes that the middle and bottom figures resemble the human form: ‘the shape of a Human Body so exactly, so that they lay straight extended, with their hands upon the Abdomen, and the Two Legs Straight out by one an other’.

    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) Dutch microscopist, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1680.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Netherlands
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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