Philosophical Transactions

Chronology of Leeuwenhoek's articles in Philosophical Transactions.

The Royal Society, a radical, upstart group housed in Gresham College, preached experiment and observation, not theory. The members advocated Francis Bacon's inductive reasoning based on observation and experiment. Their meetings featured live demonstrations of experiments by Curator of Experiments Robert Hooke.

According to Sprat's History, they rejected:

amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style ... bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits and Scholars.

This learned society produced a journal, the first of its kind. Every month, several articles were published and once a year, they were collected into a volume. Around 1,200 of each monthly number were printed and distributed throughout the world. This journal, Philosophical Transactions, was edited and paid for by its founding editor, Henry Oldenburg. It was the one and only place where, at that time, the plain-speaking, monolingual, uncredentialed, non-theoretical foreigner van Leeuwenhoek, very much the outsider, could tell the world about the wriggling, swimming things, the multitude of little animals, that he was seeing through his tiny lenses.

The Royal Society had been meeting for thirteen years when they received Leeuwenhoek's first letter in 1673. The Society had an early triumph with Hooke's Micrographia in 1665 and it survived founding editor Henry Oldenburg's imprisonment for espionage in 1667. Philosophical Transactions was beginning its eighth year of publication in 1673:

giving some accompt of the present undertaking, studies, and labours of the ingenious in many considerable parts of the world.

The next fifty years of Leeuwenhoek's relationship with the Royal Society is divided into seven periods.

After the death of Oldenburg in September 1677, Philosophical Transactions entered a period of turmoil. For 136 numbers over 12 volumes, Oldenburg had been the only editor. He relied for manuscripts on his extensive personal international network, he paid for the printing out of his own pocket, and much of the distribution went back out to that personal network, including Leeuwenhoek.

Summary Table

The table below summarizes what I see as seven periods of Leeuwenhoek's publishing career. See the rationale.

The far right column shows the number of articles written by Leeuwenhoek and published in Philosophical Transactions. Note that the number of articles does not equal the number of letters because three letters were split, as noted on the table. Thus, the 116 articles contained excerpts from 113 letters. Other articles contained excerpts from two or three letters with the same title, but the parts were separately dated and are counted here as multiple articles.

Note:

• many articles were not published in the same period in which they were written.

• the three volumes for which Edmond Halley was editor, 16, 29, and 30. He did not publish Leeuwenhoek's letters.

* Letter 1 of 1673-04-28 divided into two articles in vol. 8 no. 94 and no. 97
** Letter 25 of 1678-05-31 divided into two articles in vol. 12 no. 140 and no. 142
*** Letter 39 of 1683-09-17 divided into two articles, one in vol. 14 no. 159, the other in vol. 17 no. 197

Secretaries

Nehemiah Grew was elected to serve as the first secretary of the Royal Society on 30 November 1677 and edited the final numbers of Philosophical Transactions, volume 12. He served until 1 December 1679, when he was replace by Thomas Gale.

Robert Hooke was elected to serve as the second secretary of the Royal Society on 30 November 1677 and published seven numbers of Philosophical Collections, including excerpts from five letters by Leeuwenhoek. He served five years, when he was replaced by Robert Plot in 1682.

Thomas Gale was elected to serve as first secretary on 1 December 1679. He served for two years, when he was replaced by Francis Aston in 1681. Gale was elected again on 16 December 1685 to replace Tancred Robinson, who had resigned on 9 December 1685 after serving only ten days. Gale served until at least 1688.

Francis Aston was elected to serve as first secretary on 30 November 1681. He served until 9 December 1685, when he resigned due to lack of compensation. The next week, the Royal Society decided to pay him 50 pounds for his services. In addition, they decided that the Philosophical Transactions should be edited by a paid clerk and they elected former president John Hoskyns to replace Aston. See Birch's History, vol. IV, pp. 443, 449-451.

Robert Plot was elected to serve as secretary in November 1682 and edited volumes 13 and 14. He served for two years.

William Musgrave was elected to serve as secretary in December 1684 and edited volume 15. He served for one year.

Edmond Halley was appointed clerk of the Royal Society on 27 January 1686 to assist secretaries John Hoskyns and Thomas Gale. Halley edited volume 16 and helped Richard Waller edit volumes 17 and 18.

Richard Waller was elected to serve as first secretary on 30 November 1687 and edited volumes 17 and 18. He was replaced by John Harris in 1709 but was re-elected on 30 November 1710 and served until 13 January 1714.

Hans Sloane was elected to serve as second secretary on 30 November 1693 and edited volumes 19 through 28.

Edmond Halley was elected to serve as second secretary on 30 November 1713 and edited volumes 29 and 30.

James Jurin was elected to serve as second secretary on 30 November 1721 and edited volumes 31 through 34.

Presidents

The presidents of the Royal Society during Leeuwenhoek's career.

William Brouncker was elected to serve as president on 22 April 1663.
Joseph Williamson was elected to replace him on 30 November 1677.
Christopher Wren was elected on 30 November 1680.
John Hoskins was elected on 30 November 1682.
Cyril Wyche was elected on 30 November 1683.
Samuel Pepys was elected on 1 December 1684.
John Carberry was elected on 30 November 1686.
Thomas Pembroke was elected on 30 November 1689
Robert Southwell was elected on 1 December 1690.
Charles Montague was elected on 30 November 1695.
John Somers was elected on 30 November 1698.
Isaac Newton was elected on 30 November 1703 and served until 1727.

Learn more:

The complete run of Philosophical Transactions is available at the Royal Society Publishing's online archive.

A complete set of all the articles in the first 56 volumes (except vols. 38 - 46) of Philosophical Transactions, including all the articles by Leeuwenhoek, in volumes 8 through 32, is available from WikiMedia Commons: Category: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1665-1886).

The Related Letters, listed below under the expandable Learn more, has all of the letters up to 1708 (Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters vols. 1 - 16) that were translated and excerpted in the Royal Society's journal Philosophical Transactions. They were all given a title, often with the information about author and date that we would now add to a title page.

Note that there is not a strict one-to-one correspondence between letters and articles. Several articles contained content from more than one letter. Several letters were spread out over more than one article.

The complete list of articles by year with title.