History
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Milestones in Incident Light Fluorescence Microscopy
Since the middle of the last century, fluorescence microscopy developed into a bio scientific tool with one of the biggest impacts on our understanding of life. Watching cells and proteins with the…Read article
Video Talk by Roger Tsien: Fluorescent Proteins
Live cell imaging has been revolutionized by the discovery of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). This lecture covers the history of GFP, how it folds and becomes fluorescent, how it has been mutated…Read article
A Brief History of Light Microscopy – From the Medieval Reading Stone to Super-Resolution
The history of microscopy begins in the Middle Ages. As far back as the 11th century, plano-convex lenses made of polished beryl were used in the Arab world as reading stones to magnify manuscripts.…Read article
Video Talk by Joseph Gall: Early History of Microscopy
Joseph Gall takes us through the history of early microscopes and the discovery of the cell. Compound microscopes were invented alongside the telescope in the 17th century; however these microscopes…Read article
Videos on the Leica History (German only)
April 26th 2013 is the 170th anniversary of the birth of Ernst Leitz I (1843-1920), who turned a small optical workshop in Wetzlar into an optics company of world renown. At the beginning of the 20th…Read article
50 Years of Image Analysis
Modern image analysis systems perform highly sophisticated image processing functions on images from an automated microscope and digital camera. 50 years ago, the first image analysis system was…Read article
Fluorescent Proteins - From the Beginnings to the Nobel Prize
Fluorescent proteins are the fundament of recent fluorescence microscopy and its modern applications. Their discovery and consequent development was one of the most exciting innovations for life…Read article
The History of Stereo Microscopy – Part III
Until the middle of the 19th century, microscopes were hand-crafted custom instruments. At the time, it was not possible to predict the properties of a lens in advance, so lenses were shaped and…Read article
The History of Stereo Microscopy – Part II
For millennia, glass was admired for its beauty and the artful objects that could be created with it. With the rise of the exact sciences, however, researchers became more demanding with regard to…Read article
The History of Stereo Microscopy – Part I
The 17th century in Europe was marked by the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). The population lived in constant fear and poverty. Marauding hordes wandered the countryside; failed harvests, plagues,…Read article
Multi-Wavelength Epi-Illumination in Fluorescence Microscopy
Fluorescence is a process where a substance after having absorbed light (photons) emitts a radiation the wavelength (colour) of which is longer than that of the absorbed light, and where this…Read article