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La Lettre
© B.Eymann - Académie des sciences
Pascale Cossart
Secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des Sciences, Professor at
Institut Pasteur
The discipline of microbiology was born at exactly the
same time as the Académie des Sciences. It is now in
full “renaissance”, and even undergoing a revolution.
Indeed, in the last twenty years, many new concepts have
emerged; others are about to appear. This revolution
will increasingly influence our daily lives, including
our nutrition, medicine and many fields in biology, not
forgetting the environment.
An historical perspective
It all started in 1666 in Delft: the draper Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, then 34 years of age, used micros-
copes – which were far from resembling current microscopes – to ascertain the quality of his fabrics. He
quickly grew a passion for microscopy and started making himself lenses, of a quality and a power that
had never been reached before. This led him to observe the contents of blood, sperm and many other
liquids, such as water from the ponds of his village and brought him to discover what he called “animal-
cules”, small organisms sometimes moving. These unicellular living organisms were able to divide in a
binary way, thus giving rise to identical unicellular organisms: van Leeuwenhoeck had just discovered bac-
teria. He recorded his observations in letters he sent to the Royal Society as early as 1673. An important
correspondence then followed, lasting until his death in 1723. The Royal Society elected him as a member
en 1680, the Académie des Sciences admitted him as Corresponding Member in 1699.
Van Leeuwenhoek’s work long remained unknown, partly because this scientist had not shared his lense
manufacturing technology with others, preventing his observations from being reproduced and his conclu-
sions from being verified. A the time, research publications were not subject to the same rules as those
which are imposed nowadays!
It is really to Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch that we owe the birth of microbiology in the late 19
th
Century.
The new microbiology