The Leeuwenhoek Lecture. Viruses: retrospect and prospect

Abstract

To be invited to give the Leeuwenhoek Lecture is a great compliment, which I appreciate perhaps all the more because I greatly doubt that I deserve it. My misgivings are not because I lack in esteem for Leeuwenhoek’s work, or in willingness to do him homage. On the contrary, they come mainly because his remarkable achievements leave me humbly conscious of my inability to do the occasion justice. But I have other doubts, because I also suspect the appropriateness of my subject, which seems to me rather remote from the study of the ‘little animals’ whose activities so delighted the ‘father of microbiology’. I cannot help fearing that he might well consider viruses, or at least my concept of them, to be far too micro and perhaps sadly lacking in bios for his taste. Indeed, the only important connexion between our subjects might seem to him the wholly regrettable one that bacteriophages destroy some of the ‘ animalcules ’ whose existence he established. Happily I comfort myself a little with the belief that, had he lived in this age instead of 300 years ago, he would have been as fruitful and original in using the electron microscope as he was with his primitive lenses, and that unravelling the complex morphology of bacteriophages would have given him more than enough pleasure to compensate for any displeasure at their lethal activities.