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Influence of Delft
Delft: the birthplace of microbiology?
The world of science is a very progressive world; one is trying to understand and control life as much as possible. In iGEM we are even more progressive, we are working in a relative “new” field, called Synthetic Biology. Central in the synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and system that do not exist in the natural world and the redesign of existing biological systems to perform specific tasks.
These innovative and advanced developments are the result of hours and hours of work done by a lot of genius scientist. However, for every development there should always be a basis. If one would back trace all the innovation to their origin, the basis for all our current lab-work are micro-organisms. In that sense, one may consider the discovery of microorganisms as the basis for all our achievements and the forthcoming, promising achievements.
Succeeding with this line of reasoning, one may see Delft as the birthplace of microbiology. Four genius scientist contributed very important discoveries during these first steps in Microbiology. Since the fact that this year the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Biotechnologie exist 100 year and because we are very proud of the important contribution of the Delft’s scientist, we would like to pay attention to these four amazing and important scientist.
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The Delft's Scientist
Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek
First of all, in 1674 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked through his microscope and discovered a total new world, the the world of microbiology. These became known due to his correspondence with the Royal Society in London.
(of Anthonie, Antonie of Theunis) (Delft, 24 oktober 1632 - aldaar, 26 augustus 1723) was een Nederlands handelsman, landmeter, wijnroeier, glasblazer en microbioloog. Van Leeuwenhoek is vooral bekend door zijn zelf gefabriceerde microscoop en zijn pionierswerk voor de celbiologie en de microbiologie. Vanaf 1674 deed hij vele ontdekkingen die bekend werden door zijn correspondentie met de Royal Society in Londen
