James Hillier, co-inventor of the electron microscope
Over at the Toronto Star we found out that James Hiller, co-inventor of the electron microscope
After winning a scholarship to attend the University of Toronto, he studied mathematics and physics, earning a master’s degree in 1938 and a doctorate in physics in 1941.
“He was very humble, very humble, but he was inwardly also very proud (of his work),” said his son, J. Robert Hillier.
While at the University of Toronto, Hillier and fellow student Albert Prebus designed and built a microscope in 1938 that passed a beam of electrons instead of a beam of light through a specimen.
The device magnified an image 7,000 times – three times more powerful than what could be done optically at the time.
Today, the modern equivalent of his device – now known as the electron microscope – can magnify objects to more than 2 million times their actual size. However, each generation of the instrument has been based on the principles developed by Hillier’s original work.
~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com
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