Jan Swammerdam

Jan Swammerdam (1637 to 1680) was a Dutch biologist and microscopist from Amsterdam who studied medicine at Leiden from 1661 under Johannes van Horne and Franciscus Sylvius and took his M.D. in 1667. He is not known to have settled into a medical practice, though he is recorded as practising occasionally to pay for his research. His anatomical work includes experiments on muscle contraction, early use of the microscope in dissection and, in 1658, the first observation and description of red blood cells, and his studies of insects showed that egg, larva, pupa and adult are forms of one animal. A priority dispute with his fellow student Regnier de Graaf turned their friendship into hostility. This entry records his medical and anatomical side.