Swammerdam

Swammerdam Jan (Jan Swammerdam, 1637-1680), Dutch naturalist, famous microscopic anatomist; son of an apothecary who lived in Swammerdam near Amsterdam and received his name from his native city. S. studied medicine in Leiden, where he met the Danes de Graaf and Steno, with whom he went to Paris for 2 years. In Leiden he defended a work on respiration for the degree of Doctor of Medicine and subsequently devoted himself entirely to anatomy and the observation of lower animals. Particularly important are his works on metamorphosis, classification ("Allgemeene Verhandeling van bloed-lose Dierjenst", i.e., general history of small bloodless animals, Utrecht, 1669) and the anatomy of insects ("Biblia Naturae", published by Burghave in Leiden many years after S.'s death, 1737-38). S. distinguished 3 forms of individuals in bees, described the queen's ovary, the drone's sexual organs, the bee's sting and its mouth appendages, the structure of the fly and the mayfly. He also gave an excellent anatomy of the snail, slug, cuttlefish, and frog, the development of which was also the subject of his research. He introduced the practice of injecting vessels.