Nicolaas Hartsoeker
Hartsoeker, a Dutch lens grinder and natural philosopher, was the son of a Remonstrant minister. Beginning in his twenties, he became interested in optics and embryology.
In the 1682 portrait by Casper Netscher below, note in the bottom left of the portrait the conventional microscope similar to Hooke's that had two lenses in a tube. Note also the single-lens microscope just below in an ornate frame. Hartsoecker developed the screw-barrel microscope. He is best known for his ideas about the "l'enfant", infant (often given the alchemical term "homunculi", but not by Hartsoecker) in human sperm. The image on the right comes from page 230 of Essay de dioptrique.
Hartsoeker quarreled with, among others, Huygens, Newton, Leibniz, and Leeuwenhoek, who wrote to Leibniz in 1715 (Send-Brieven p. 170):
It has come to my ears that Hartsoeker hasn't much of a reputation among the learned; and when I saw that he laid claims to untruths, and was stuck up, I looked into his writings no further.
Leeuwenhoek was referring to Hartsoeker's book Proeve der deur-gesigt-kunde, the Dutch translation of Essai de dioptrique, which had been published in Paris in 1694. In it, Hartsoeker claimed to have discovered sperm. In December 1698, Leeuwenhoek wrote to Harman van Zoelen defending his own priority. He wrote of Hartzoeker with a withering put-down:
I do not know what kind of Person this Hartsoeker is, because there are more people who bear the name of Hartsoeker and have called at my House, amongst others, many Years ago, an Aged Man who, they told me, was a Minister of the Remonstrant Church at Rotterdam and who had with him a Son, who was a Young Student and who was repeatedly admonished by his Father to attend closely, because I was showing things, as the Minister said, which had never been revealed in the World.
It appears strange to me that Mr. Hartsoeker uses the words that, to his knowledge, he is the first of all who began to examine the sperm of Animals with the magnifying glasses.
Hartsoeker returned the insult in the posthumously published (1730) Cours de physique accompagné de plusieurs pièces concernant la Physique qui ont dèja paru et d’un extrait critique des lettres de M. Leeuwenhoek.
| Je n’ai jamais été surpris qu’un homme comme notre Auteur, don’t le genie étoit assurement au dessous du médiocre, ait parlé comme il a fait des globules du sang, du lait etc., mais mon étonnement a été bien grand de voir que de célébres Médecins et Professeurs en Philosophie et en Médecine, l’ont cité avec éloge sur sa belle découverte des pretendues boules, et ont adopté son galimatias. | I had never been surprised that a man like our Author, whose genius is surely below mediocre, should speak of the globules of blood and milk etc. as he did, but my shock was really great when I saw that famous doctors and professors of Philosophy and Medicine had cited him with praise because of his beautiful discovery of the supposed globules, and had adopted his gobbledygook (galimatias = meaningless speech). |
1710. Hartsoeker's Éclaircissemens sur les conjectures physiques (Amst. 1710, p. 82): ‘M. Leewenhoek peut servir ici d'exemple, ayant écrit d'un stile bas et rampant, cinq ou six gros volumes d'observations, qu'on pourrait mettre en très peu de pages si l'on en voulait extraire ce qui est bon, et laisser ce qui est faux ou inutile: Et si ses ouvrages avoient valu la peine d'y faire des remarques, il y a long-temps que je l'aurois entrepris pour désabuser le public.’....
‘Mr. Leewenhoek can serve here as an example, having written in a low and creeping style, five or six large volumes of observations, which could be put into very few pages if one wanted to extract what is good, and leave out what is false or useless: And if his works had been worth the trouble of making remarks on them, I would have undertaken it a long time ago to disabuse the public.’....
p. 83: ‘Allez chez lui, comme j'ai fait autrefois pour voir toutes ces belles choses également impossibles et incroyables; il vous dira sans façon et assez plaisamment qu'il ne les fait voir qu'à sa femme, et ne daignera pas seulement de vous parler, mais vous congédiera d'une manière fort incivile, c'est-à-dire, si vous êtes un peu connoisseur; car lors qu'il a à faire à des gens qui admirent tout ce qui leur fait voir, c'est alors qu'il étale son éloquence. Mais je voudrois bien lui demander de quels couteaux, il se sert pour faire toutes ces belles dissections dont je viens de parler....’
‘Go to his house, as I did in the past, to see all these beautiful things, equally impossible and incredible; he will tell you without ceremony and quite pleasantly that he only shows them to his wife, and will not only deign to speak to you, but will dismiss you in a very uncivil manner, that is to say, if you are a little connoisseur; for when he has to deal with people who admire everything that makes them see, it is then that he displays his eloquence. But I would like to ask him what knives he uses to make all these beautiful dissections of which I have just spoken....’
1730. Hartsoeker's Cours de physique (La Haye 1730): In Éloge de M. Hartsoeker par M. de Fontenelle; ‘Il avoit vu chez M. Leuvenhoek des microscopes. Cette invention de voir contre le jour de petits objets transparents par le moyen de petites boules de verre, est due à M. Leuvenhoek, et M. Hudde, Bourgmestre d'Amsterdam, grand mathématicien, a dit à M. Hartsoëker qu'il étoit étonnant que cette découverte eût échappé à tous tant qu'ils étoient de Géomètres et de Philosophes, et eût été réservée à un homme sans lettres, tel que Leuvenhoek’ .... ‘Il y a fait de plus un Extrait entier des Lettres de M. Leuvenhoek, parce qu'il trouvait que dans ce livre beaucoup d'observations rares et curieuses se perdoient dans un tas de choses inutiles qui empêcheroient peut-être qu'on ne se donnast la peine de les y aller déterrer.’
‘He had seen microscopes at Mr. Leuvenhoek’s. This invention of seeing small transparent objects against the light by means of small glass balls, is due to Mr. Leuvenhoek, and Mr. Hudde, Burgomaster of Amsterdam, a great mathematician, said to Mr. Hartsoëker that it was astonishing that this discovery had escaped everyone as long as they were Geometers and Philosophers, and had been reserved for a man without letters, such as Leuvenhoek’ .... ‘He also made an entire Extract from the Letters of Mr. Leuvenhoek, because he found that in this book many rare and curious observations were lost in a pile of useless things which would perhaps prevent one from taking the trouble to go and dig them up.’
- In Remarques, p. 71: ‘Ruysch, Leeuwenhoek, ont trouvé, dit-il, pour confirmer son choix, que les tubes des femelles, qu'ils ont ouvertes après la copulation, étoient remplis de semence et, cela se pourroit, quoique j'aie mes raisons pour ne me pas trop fier aux observations du dernier...’
Ruysch, Leeuwenhoek, found, he said, to confirm his choice, that the tubes of the females, which they opened after copulation, were filled with semen and, this could be, although I have my reasons for not trusting too much the observations of the latter...’
Extrait critique des lettres de feu M. Leeuwenhoek, p. 66.
Lindeboom discusses the dispute between Leeuwenhoek and Hartsoeker in his chapter on sexual reproduction, especially pages 140-144, in Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, 1632-1723: studies on the life and work of the Delft scientist commemorating the 350th anniversary of his birthday.
