Definition
From the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, animalcule meant the very small living beings that were observed through a microscope. The famous microscopist, Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), one of the major improvers of this instrument during the second part of the seventeenth century, used the expression spermatic animalcules.
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© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Tirard, S. (2015). Animalcules. In: Gargaud, M., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44185-5_5252
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44185-5_5252
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