John, a celebrated natural philosopher, was the son of John James Swammerdam, an apothecary and naturalist of Amsterdam, and was born in 1637. His father intended him for the church, and with this view had him instructed in Latin and Greek; but thinking himself unequal to so serious a vocation, he prevailed with his father to consent to his applying himself to physic. When grown up, he seriously attended to his anatomical and medical studies; yet spent part of the day and the night in discovering, catching, and examining the flying insects not only in the province of Holland, but in those of Guelderland and Utrecht. Thus initiated in natural history, he went to the university of Leyden in 1651; and in 1653 was admitted a candidate of physic in that university. His attention being now engaged by anatomy, he began to consider how the parts of the body, prepared by dissection, could be preserved, and kept in constant order for anatomical demonstration; and here he succeeded as he had done before in his contrivances for dissecting and preserving the minutest insects. He afterwards made a journey into France, where he spent some time at Saumur, and where he became acquainted with several learned men. In 1667 he returned to Leyden, and took the degree of M.D. The Grand Duke of Tuscany offered him 12,600 florins for his collection, on condition of his removing them himself into Tuscany, and coming to live at the court of Florence; but Swammerdam, who hated a court life, declined his highness's proposal. In 1668 he had published a General History of Insects. Respecting this work, his biographer, Boerhaave, subsequently wrote that "all the ages from the commencement of natural history have produced nothing to equal, nothing to compare with it." About this time his father began to take offence at his inconsistently neglecting the practice of physic, which might have supported him in affluence, and would neither supply him with money nor clothes. This reduced him to some difficulties. In 1675 he published his History of the Ephemeridas; and his father dying the same year, left him a fortune sufficient for his support; but he did not long survive him, for he died in 1682. Gaubius gave a translation of all his works from the original Dutch into Latin, from which they were translated into English, and published in folio, in 1758.