Martin Wilson , PhD

Martin Wilson

Martin started off his career investigating contraceptive vaccines with the Medical Research Council (MRC). Following this, he moved into lung toxicology and gained his PhD in nanotoxicology from Edinburgh Napier University. He then returned to the MRC to work on endometrial pathology. Following a brief detour into global pharmaceuticals, Martin joined the magazine ‘Bitesize Bio’ and set up the Microscopy and Imaging Channel.

Now freelance, Martin runs his own arts and crafts business creating award-winning slate art and bespoke slate and wood items. Martin is still very much involved in science- writing articles for Bitesize Bio as well as Agar Scientific and has written the ebook ‘Before You Touch That Microscope!’ You can find out more about his arts and crafts work on his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/hatchburnandcarve.

Immersion Objectives

How an immersion objective, which has a liquid medium between it and the specimen being observed, helps increase the numerical aperture and microscope resolution is explained in this article.

Intensity distribution (arbitrary color coding) of an image of two points where the distance between them corresponds to the Rayleigh criterion.

Microscope Resolution: Concepts, Factors and Calculation

This article explains in simple terms microscope resolution concepts, like the Airy disc, Abbe diffraction limit, Rayleigh criterion, and full width half max (FWHM). It also discusses the history.

The Fundamentals and History of Fluorescence and Quantum Dots

At some point in your research and science career, you will no doubt come across fluorescence microscopy. This ubiquitous technique has transformed the way in which microscopists can image, tag and…

Spherical aberration describes the fact that waves which pass through the centre of the lens are refracted less than the waves which pass through the edges of the curved lens.

Eyepieces, Objectives and Optical Aberrations

For most microscope applications, there are generally only two sets of optics which are adjusted by the user, namely, the objectives and the eyepieces. Of course, this is assuming that the microscope…

Steps of Koehler Illumination

Koehler Illumination: A Brief History and a Practical Set Up in Five Easy Steps

The technique of Koehler Illumination is one of the most important and fundamental techniques in achieving optimum imaging in any given light microscope set-up. Although it should be routinely used as…

Angular aperture

Collecting Light: The Importance of Numerical Aperture in Microscopy

Numerical aperture (abbreviated as ‘NA’) is an important consideration when trying to distinguish detail in a specimen viewed down the microscope. NA is a number without units and is related to the…

Convalaria

Introduction to Widefield Microscopy

This article gives an introduction to widefield microscopy, one of the most basic and commonly used microscopy techniques. It also shows the basic differences between widefield and confocal…