THE FATHER OF MICROBIOLOGY, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, had unnaturally acute eyesight, a talent for grinding lenses and more than enough curiosity to compensate for his lack of a formal scientific education. Nothing escaped the attention of his rudimentary microscope collection. He scrutinized a slimy green water sample from a nearby lake, ferns and fossils, bat wings, sour milk, the tartar from his teeth, dog semen and human feces, discovering a galaxy of invisible organisms in the process. He was the first to see the green alga Spirogyra, single-celled bacteria and protozoa, flagellate giardia, red blood cells, sperm cells and microscopic nematodes. When the Royal Society of London substantiated his findings, the news caused such a sensation that the queen of England and the czar of Russia stopped by for a look.

Three hundred and fifty years after van Leewenhoek went hog wild with his homemade, hand-held microscopes in Holland, Utah State University scientists are enlisting his animalcules, as he called them, in the recovery of poisoned soil and water. As for the deadly microbes that strike panic in the heart of legendary restaurant chefs and seasoned security chiefs, the scientists are policing them with detectors of E. coli and anthrax.

The scientists and their microbes toil in anonymity, unheralded for their flavoring of convenience and low-fat foods and for their production of fossil-fuel-free energy.

Van Leeuwenhoek would have approved. In a 1715 letter he wrote, "Some go to make money out of science, or to get a reputation in the learned world. But in grinding lenses and discovering things hidden from our sight, these count for nought. And I am satisfied too that not one man in a thousand is capable of such study, because it needs much time ... and you must always keep thinking about these things if you are to get any results. And over and above all, most men are not curious to know: nay, some even make no bones about saying, What does it matter whether we know this or not?"

Thanks to van Leeuwenhoek's animalcules and the science he inspired, we have Aggie ice cream, antibiotics, laundry detergents and a host of other modern products that have not only made life convenient but more bearable than in van Leeuwenhoek's flea-ridden time. more