Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born while Galileo was still alive, and he ended up developing a similar skill in lens making to that of Galileo. Galileo turned his results to the heavens and began a revolution in how we understand our place in the Universe. van Leeuwenhoek looked inward and became the first to recognize that our own world is teeming with life that’s too small to see without a microscope.

The revolution he spawned is still changing our understanding about where we fit in right here on Earth.

Microscopy remains a mixture of science and art. All sorts of biology and chemistry are involved in sample preparation, and choosing the optics to bring out what you need to see can involve an understanding of physics. But to turn the options you have into a thing of beauty requires a sense of aesthetics. The people behind the gallery below, who have submitted their images to the Nikon Small World microscopy competition, clearly have that.