Protistology is a scientific discipline devoted to the study of protists, a highly diverse group of eukaryotic organisms.
Their sizes range from unicellular picoeukaryotes only a few micrometres in diameter to multicellular marine algae several metres long.
Since the beginning, the study of protists has been intimately linked to developments in microscopy, which have allowed important advances in the understanding of these organisms due to their generally microscopic nature.
Among the pioneers was Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who observed a variety of free-living protists and in 1674 named them “very little animalcules”.
In fact, many of the researchers cited below considered themselves as protozoologists, phycologists, mycologists, microbiologists, microscopists, parasitologists, limnologists, biologists, naturalists, zoologists, botanists, etc., but made significant contributions to the field.