Wrote Letter L-081 of 1679-04-27 to Constantijn Huygens about the number of sperm in the milt of the cod

Date: 
April 27, 1679
Standard reference information
L-number: 
L-081
Collected Letters number: 
44
Collected Letters volume: 
3

Text of the letter in the original Dutch and in English translation from Alle de Brieven. The Collected Letters at the DBNL - De Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

The original manuscript is lost. An unsigned copy in another hand on two quarto pages is found at Leiden University #178. A copy written and signed by Leeuwenhoek, not noted in Collected Letters, on three quarto pages, written and signed by Leeuwenhoek, is preserved at the Royal Society (Early Letters L1.41). This is the first manuscript on quarto pages. All the previous are on folio pages.

Leeuwenhoek wrote this letter to Huygens, unpublished in his lifetime, about the number of sperm in the milt of the cod. He calculated 150,000,000,000 sperm and 13,385,000,000 people if the whole earth were as densely populated as Holland.

It was a copy of a part of Letter L-080 of 25 April 1679, written to Nehemiah Grew, at the time secretary of the Royal Society.