In 1675, a Dutch man, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, noticed “little animals” in rainwater that he was examining through a microscope. That’s how bacteria were discovered, and that’s why the observant man, who had no formal science education, is now called “the Father of Microbiology.”
Because the first "little animals" that scientists observed were shaped like little sticks, they were named bacteria, from the Greek word bacterion, meaning a rod or stick.
