Jan Swammerdam
Dutch scientist Jan Swammerdam's microscopic studies of insects repudiated the notion of spontaneous generation and formed the basis for modern entomology. He had a medical degree (University of Leiden, 1667), but spent his career in research and publishing, except for a time after 1675, when he apparently gave up science to follow a religious mystic. Swammerdam examined thousands of insects, devised new ways in which to view them through a microscope, made detailed drawings (turned into etchings) and showed the stages of butterfly metamorphosis for the first time. He's also famous for his anatomical research, especially his discovery of valves in the lymphatic vessels (Swammerdam valves!) and the discovery of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. He published Historia Insectorum Generalis in 1669, but his collective work was not translated and published until 1737 (his Biblia Naturae or The Book of Nature). He died at the age of 43, a long-time sufferer of what has since been deemed malaria.

Extra credit: He was a contemporary of the other Dutch microscopist, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, and of the English inventor Robert Hooke.

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