Delft: the birthplace of Microbiology?

The world of science is very progressive with researchers trying to understand and control life as much as possible. In iGEM, we are even more progressive. We are working in a relatively “new” field, called Synthetic Biology. Central to synthetic biology are the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems 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 research by dedicated scientists. However, for every development there should always be a foundation. Fundamental to our work are microorganisms. In that sense, one may consider the discovery of microorganisms as the starting of point for all achievements in the field of synthetic biology.

Delft has long been recognised as the birthplace of microbiology, thanks to the work of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Centuries later, three other microbiologists made fundamental contributions to the early steps in Microbiology. Because we are very proud of the important contribution of Delft’s microbiologists, we would like to pay attention to these [[https://2011.igem.org/Team:TU-Delft/Project/Microbial-History/Influences-of-Delft four scientists]].