““Martinus Beijerinck, a Dutchman, was amongst the first to demonstrate their planetary importance. Reclusive, brusque, and unpopular, he had no love for people, except for a few close colleagues, nor any love for medical microbiology. Disease didn't interest him. He wanted to study microbes in their natural habitats: soil, water, plant roots. In 1888, he found bacteria that pulled nitrogen out of the air and turned it into ammonia for plants to use; later, he isolated species that contributed to the movements of sulphur through the soil and atmosphere. This work stimulated a rebirth of microbiology in Beijerinck's city of Delft-where Leeuwenhoek had first laid eyes on bacteria two centuries earlier. The members of this new found Delft school, along with intellectual soulmates like the Russian Sergei Winogradsky, called themselves microbial ecologists. They revealed that microbes were not just threats to humanity but critical components of the world.””
