&gt;&gt;  As Nick Lane, a biochemist from University College London, once wrote, “More than being the first to see this unimagined world of animalcules, he was the first even to think of looking.”<p>I very much doubt that. To achieve what he did, Van Leeuwenhoek would have needed to: have technical skill; be literate and sufficiently educated; have connections to get published; have access to material resources; have lived in a time of exploration; have lived in a place of freedom of expression; be of the required gender and race; have sufficient free time; and surely a certain amount of luck.<p>How many others would likely have already considered - perhaps even tried - to look for tiny living things, yet lacked one or more prerequisites from the (incomplete) list above? Nick Lane cannot be refuted, yet this quotation almost certainly does a disservice to the truth. Good and bad ideas are everywhere all the time; Van Leeuwenhoek deserves credit, but only for his execution.