Posted in January 2017

An exhibition at Van Leeuwenhoek’s resting place.

2017 is the 175^th anniversary of the founding of the Polytechnic School that eventually became Delft University of Technology. The University is celebrating with a 175 day Lustrum, much of which will focus on the Life Sciences. It is also 100 years since Van Iterson founded the Delft Botanic Garden on the land behind his laboratory.

We are beginning the celebrations with a look at the history of microbiology and the biosciences in Delft, from the 17^th to the 21^st centuries. The exhibition will run until 26 February, 2017.

This will take the form of an exhibition in the area around Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s grave in the Oude Kirk.

The text on the poster boards is in Dutch, but there are also English language handouts. It includes 20th century teaching microscopes, a cross section of an electron microscope and  3-D scanned replicates of a Van Leeuwenhoek microscope and the Delft telescope.

Facsimile Van Leeuwenhoek microscope and its 3-D scanned replicate

The exhibition offers a taster of the achievements of Delft microbiologists and introduces some of the people who helped and supported them. For example, we might never have heard of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and his little animals without Reinier de Graaf, the doctor who introduced van Leeuwenhoek to the Royal Society of London, publishers of much of his work. Jacques van Marken not only brought Beijerinck to Delft to establish his industrial microbiology laboratory, he was also one of the people instrumental in creating the Department of Microbiology and Professor’s Chair for Beijerinck at what was then the Delft Polytechnic.

Many others have provided help, support and encouragement, but the silent contributor to the history of microbiology is the City of Delft itself. Many very well-studied microorganisms were found for the first time in samples from Delft’s canals, soil and from industrial sources, even now.

Over 300 years ago, before Van Leeuwenhoek found his little animals, the city was already a hotspot in scientific research-for example Stevin and de Groot dropped different lead balls off the tower of the New Church and proved that they hit the ground at the same time 3 years before Galileo did the same experiment from the tower of Pisa!

Delft’s New Church