An exposition of historical microscopes and other scientific instruments from the collection of Henri Van Heurck (1838-1909)

Already more then a century ago, in 1891, Henri Van Heurck organised an international exposition on microscopy in Antwerp with the honorary presidency of Ernst Abbe and Albert Nachet. A large part of his collection still remains and EMC 2004 is proud to present you some of the most historical instruments in microscopy available today.

The exposition will contain a selection of about 50 historical microscopes together with other scientific items which belonged to Henri Van Heurck, a very wealthy industrial who spent much of his time on scientific research on botany, microscopy and X-rays. He also gathered world-famous scientific collections among which a historical herbarium "Sieber- von Reichenbach-Van Heurck" containing 300.000 specimens, microscopical diatome slides with 19.000 items and a collection of 98 microscopes including the only original "Leeuwenhoek" outside The Netherlands. Moreover, he was in close correspondence with Ernst Abbe and Roderick Zeiss and he designed a microscope stand for the company W. Watson & Sons which became their top model from 1890 till 1910. He was also a pioneer on X-rays and obtained his first results at the end of January 1896, one month after Wilhelm Röntgen.