Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
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40 free Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had no university degree and no scientific training, yet he saw things nobody had seen before. Working alone with tiny microscopes he built himself, he opened up a hidden world of living things too small for the naked eye, and earned the nickname father of microbiology. This quiz turns the best fun facts about him into questions: his day job, his odd experiments, the famous visitors who knocked on his door, the discoveries he made in the most unlikely samples, and the honours that still carry his name. It suits students meeting him in a biology class, teachers after a quick classroom round, and anyone who enjoys the story of a curious amateur who changed science.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In a famous 1683 report, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek described bacteria darting about in a sample of what?
Dental plaque
Dental plaque scraped from his own mouth teemed with life, he told the Royal Society. Two old men who had never cleaned their teeth gave him even livelier samples.
Q 02Antonie van Leeuwenhoek opened his own shop in 1654 in which trade, far from any university?
Cloth merchant
Cloth merchant, or draper, was his trade. He had no degree, no scientific training and knew no language but Dutch, yet became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Q 03Which visiting ruler received Antonie van Leeuwenhoek on his boat and was given an eel-viewing microscope?
Peter the Great
Peter the Great could use his new 'eel-viewer' to watch blood circulate whenever he wanted. Other callers over the years ranged from philosophers to English royalty.
Q 04Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was made trustee of the bankrupt estate of which painter, born in his city the same year?
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer was baptised in the same town within days of him, and the two lived close to the main market. Whether they were friends is still a matter of guesswork.
Q 05What did Antonie van Leeuwenhoek say he rubbed on his teeth every morning to keep them sound?
Salt
Salt every morning was his habit, he wrote at fifty, and he credited it for his well-preserved teeth. After meals he also used a toothpick and rubbed them hard with a cloth.
Q 06Antonie van Leeuwenhoek found a million tiny creatures in one drop of water in which he had soaked which spice?
Pepper
Pepper water gave him creatures far smaller than any he had met before, now thought to be bacteria. He later admitted the true count per drop was nearer eight million.
Q 07The Dutch hospital named after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, part of a national research institute, treats which disease?
Cancer
Cancer, not infection, is its speciality: the hospital is the clinical arm of a national institute founded in 1913. Its researchers reported a possible new human organ in 2020.
Q 08The Dutch surname Leeuwenhoek, borne by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, means the 'corner' of which animal?
Lion
Lion is 'leeuw' in Dutch and 'hoek' is corner: his family lived on the corner of an alley known as the Little Lion's Gate.
Q 09What did Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first describe in 1677 and credit, wrongly, as the sole origin of a child?
Sperm cells
Sperm cells, he argued, were where a child truly begins: man, he wrote, comes not from an egg. They were first seen through one of his microscopes that year.
Q 10Antonie van Leeuwenhoek never wrote a book; in what form did he send his discoveries to the Royal Society?
Letters
Letters, hundreds of them in chatty everyday Dutch, were how he published. He kept sending them for fifty years, right up to the last weeks of his life.
Q 11Antonie van Leeuwenhoek spent nearly all his life in which Dutch city, famous for its blue-and-white pottery?
Delft
Delft was his birthplace, his workplace and his grave: after an apprenticeship elsewhere he rarely left. The curious, kings included, had to come to him.
Q 12Unlike the compound instruments of rivals, each microscope made by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek magnified with what?
A single lens
A single lens sat in a small metal plate held right up to the eye. Compound microscopes of the day managed about 30 times magnification; his went past 200.
Q 13A crater named after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek lies in the southern hemisphere of which Solar System body?
The Moon
Q 21Which author of Micrographia confirmed Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's findings for a doubting Royal Society?
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke needed three attempts before he too saw the creatures, then showed them to the assembled fellows. His own 1665 book had probably inspired the Dutchman to start.
Q 22Which co-inventor of calculus broke a journey through Holland in 1676 to meet Antonie van Leeuwenhoek?
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz stopped off on his way from London to Hanover. He was one of a long line of famous callers who came to peer through the tiny microscopes.
Q 23Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described the crystals behind which ailment, once nicknamed the disease of kings?
Gout
The Moon carries his name on its far side, permanently out of view from Earth. No telescope on the ground can show it; only spacecraft have seen it.
Q 14In 1687, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek roasted, sliced and pressed which bean to study it under his microscope?
Coffee
Coffee beans, he found, were spongy inside and gave up an oil when pressed. He then boiled the grounds twice in rainwater and set the brew aside to study.
Q 15After pricking his own finger, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek became the first to correctly identify what?
Red blood cells
Red blood cells had been glimpsed by two earlier microscopists who did not know what they were looking at. He judged each one 25,000 times smaller than a fine grain of sand.
Q 16By showing that grain weevils breed like other insects, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek opposed which old theory of life?
Spontaneous generation
Spontaneous generation held that weevils arose from wheat and fleas from sand. He raised both and showed they were bred by parents of their own kind.
Q 17Antonie van Leeuwenhoek watched blood squeeze through which vessels, one globule at a time, in a tadpole's tail?
Capillaries
Capillaries carry blood from the arteries across to the veins, and he reasoned that the human body must work in the same way as the tadpole's.
Q 18Which pioneer of germ theory and vaccines received the Leeuwenhoek Medal, named for Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, in 1895?
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur took the medal in the final year of his life. It is awarded only about once a decade, to the scientist judged to have done most for the field.
Q 19Antonie van Leeuwenhoek belongs to which celebrated era of Dutch art, science and technology in the 1600s?
The Golden Age
The Golden Age turned the young Dutch Republic into a leader in painting, optics and science. The same era produced the pendulum clock.
Q 20By what name did the Royal Society's English translations call the tiny organisms Antonie van Leeuwenhoek found?
Animalcules
Animalcules, from the Latin for 'little animals', was the translator's choice for his plain Dutch word 'diertjes'. The term was still in use two centuries later.
Gout strikes when urate crystals collect in a joint, and he described how they look under the microscope in 1679. The nickname came from its link with a rich diet.
Q 24Which spice did Antonie van Leeuwenhoek use to dye a specimen, an early case of microscope staining?
Saffron
Saffron gave him what is often counted as the first histological stain in the history of the microscope. He is only known to have tried the trick once.
Q 25Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's first published report, in 1673, described mould, lice and the sting of which insect?
Bees
Bees gave him the stings he described in that debut, sent to London on a friend's recommendation. He could not draw well, so he hired an illustrator.
Q 26Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's father, who died when the boy was five, earned his living in which trade?
Basket maker
Basket maker was the family trade, followed by his father and his grandfather before him. His mother's relatives were well-off brewers.
Q 27At sixteen, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek left home for six years as an apprentice bookkeeper in which city?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam gave him his only training: keeping the cash and the books at a shop on the Warmoesstraat. He went home in 1654, married and opened a business of his own.
Q 28Besides keeping shop and serving at the town hall, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek qualified in 1669 as what?
A surveyor
A surveyor's appointment came from the court of Holland, on top of his post as chamberlain to the sheriffs. He held the town hall job for almost 40 years.
Q 29Van Leeuwenhoek's disease, a rare flutter that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek described in himself, affects which body part?
The diaphragm
The diaphragm twitched uncontrollably in his final illness, and he reported the symptoms with his usual precision. He was 90 and still observing.
Q 30Antonie van Leeuwenhoek cut open which garden pests and found tiny live young inside instead of eggs?
Aphids
Aphids, he found on dissecting them, held no eggs at all but tiny copies of the parent, and he never found a male. Charles Bonnet later proved by experiment that they can breed without mating.