REPOST: A Brief History of the Microscope

First crafted in the late 16th century, the microscope forever changed science by revealing worlds hidden from the naked eye. In this special repost from 2020, Gabrielle takes you through centuries of innovation—from glass lenses to high-tech marvels—and explores how this transformative tool shaped medicine, biology, and our understanding of life itself.

Three key topics

The origins of the microscope, including its earliest inventors and the coining of its name in 1625.

How microscopes evolved from simple lenses to electron and cryo-electron imaging.

The ways microscopes continue to impact scientific discovery today.

Links to Resources

Luke Jerram’s Glass Microbe Sculptures: https://www.lukejerram.com/

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – COVID-19 Images: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/novel-coronavirus-sarscov2-images

History of Microscopy – Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/technology/microscope

Explore more on our website: mathsciencehistory.com
To buy my book Hypatia: The Sum of Her Life on Amazon, visit https://a.co/d/g3OuP9h

 

🌍 Let’s Connect!
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mathsciencehistory.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/math.science.history
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mathsciencehistory 
LinkedIn: .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome back to Math! Science! History! I'm Gabrielle Birchak, your host, and today
I'm doing another repost because there's still construction going on near the
studio. So I first shared this episode in 2020 and so today I'm going to replay it
but listen all the way through to the end because after the credits I'm gonna
circle back and do a drop-in of today's most recent developments in microscopes

(00:25):
but first, a word from my advertisers. If you are listening to this podcast on
April 13th, today is the 395th birthday of the term microscope. As we enter the
third week of April in 2020, currently living in survivalist mode, I hope we

(00:49):
are all healthy and have the ability to take precautions to stay healthy and
avoid getting coronavirus. I just want to send out a huge special thank you to
all of our medical workers who selflessly put their lives on the line
for all of us and thank you to all of you amazing people out there delivering
boxes and food and dog food and toilet paper to our homes. You are helping us

(01:12):
to flatten the curve and you rock and you are my heroes so thank you. Though
some people refer to COVID-19 as the invisible enemy, the virus is far from
invisible and we know this because we have microscopic images of the virus and
we've seen the illustration of the virus as that gray fuzzy ball with red

(01:32):
spikes. The illustration is a brilliant 3d rendering of what it kind of looks
like. The particular illustration that I'm referring to is the gray ball with
red spikes but again it's just an illustration and not what the virus
actually looks like. There was a phenomenal article that I found on
Medium written by Robert Britt and I'm gonna post that on my blog and it'll

(01:54):
explain the components of the illustration and it indicates how much
more dangerous this virus is compared to other SARS related illnesses. In
actuality, the virus doesn't really look like a fuzzy gray ball with red spikes.
It's actually colorless and there's another great article that again I'll
post on my blog at mathsciencehistory.com. The article is from Wired

(02:16):
magazine and it shows an image of Luke Jerram glass statues that kind of look
like the coronavirus and just as a side note, it has nothing to do with
coronavirus. Luke Jerram is a British installation artist and he creates
sculptures, large installations, and live art projects. He's a visiting fellow at
the Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences at University of West England in

(02:39):
Bristol and like myself, he's colorblind which is really cool for an artist so
look him up on Google and check out some of his work because he's an amazing
artist. Okay, back to the story. So how do we know what coronavirus looks like? Some
of the first images to emerge of the virus were posted by the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Rocky Mountain Laboratories in

(03:01):
Hamilton, Montana. The images were captured with an electron microscope
that scans and transmits the image. After they were able to obtain an image
of COVID-19, microscopist Elizabeth Fisher produced images and then their
visual arts medical department, let me rephrase that, their visual medical arts
department colorized the images. The coloring is there so that we can

(03:25):
actually see the virus and understand what it looks like. But how did we get
this far that we can actually see a virus so clearly and understand its
structure? Well, it's all in our history, hence the history and math science
history, right? As we all know, microscopes are made from glass and we
have evidence from the Eastern Mesopotamian and Egyptian regions of

(03:46):
some of the first man-made glass that dates back to 3500 BCE. By 700 BCE,
Assyrians would manufacture lenses that could be used as magnifying lenses. One
was found in 1850 by Austin Henry Layard in a modern-day Iraq in an area that was
formerly called Nimrud. It can be seen at the British Museum in London and it

(04:08):
is called the Nimrud Lens. Around 300 BCE, Euclid wrote his work Optics, which
covered the geometry of vision and began to set the groundwork for seeing things
through glass. This body of work was further studied by many scientists
thereafter, including famed mathematicians and scientists Ptolemy,
Theon, who was Hypatia's father, and Abu Ali al-Hassan ibn al-Hassan ibn al-Haytham,

(04:35):
who is also known as al-Hassan. By 500 BCE, glass was being manufactured and
sold for profit, and by the 2nd century BCE, Chinese were using microscopes made
of a lens and a water-filled tube. Then, in the 13th century, Roger Bacon
experimented with lenses and suggested that they be used as eyeglasses. This

(04:56):
contributed to the development of the microscope. Basically, lenses at this
point really only had magnification between 6 and 10 diameters. In the 1590s,
the microscope made great progress. A father and son, Zacharias Jensen and his
son Hans, who made glasses, had discovered that when several lenses were placed
inside of a tube, they could greatly magnify an object. However, the

(05:21):
magnification of the microscope was just 9 diameters, but still, this was really
groundbreaking. So, from this point forward, the developments came quickly.
Galileo Galilei was able to use his telescope to see small objects up close.
He then developed a compound microscope using a convex and a concave lens that
he called the occhiolino, which means little eye. At this time, the word

(05:44):
microscope wasn't being used, but I'm gonna go ahead and use it so that you
know what I'm referring to. Galileo's invention wasn't actually
considered a compound microscope because it had a concave lens. In 1622, Cornelius
Drebbel presented his invention of the microscope in Rome. It was the Keplerian
microscope, which was also one of the first compound microscopes that held a

(06:08):
convex objective and a convex eyepiece. Here is where the story gets interesting.
In 1622, Drebbel, who lived in London, sent his son-in-law, Giovanni Koeffler,
off to sell the microscopes. Koeffler first traveled to France, where he met
Nicholas Piresque, and gave him a Keplerian microscope. Then, Koeffler

(06:31):
traveled to Rome, where he met the Cardinal of Santa Susanna. He gave the
Cardinal to Keplerians, but never had the chance to explain to the Cardinal how
they worked because Koeffler died while in Rome. After Koeffler died, Piresque sent
his microscope off to the Cardinal, along with an explanation as to how it works

(06:51):
and a description of the things that he observed while using the microscope.
However, for some reason, the Cardinal never received the package. Then, in 1624,
two years later, Galileo had traveled to Rome to meet the Cardinal. While he was
in Rome, the Cardinal told him that he needed help trying to get the Keplerian
microscope to work. Since Galileo had an idea as to how it worked, he was able to

(07:15):
explain Drebbel's invention to the Cardinal without any problem. In the
process, Galileo discovered that Drebbel's invention used two convex lenses. He
figured out how Drebbel's invention worked. So, a few months later, on
September 23rd, 1624, Galileo sent a new occhiolino to Prince Federico Cesi, who

(07:39):
was a polymath and who founded the scientific society known as the
Accademia dell'Ince. Along with the occhiolino, he included a letter and a
description of the lenses that he had to grind down to the correct curvatures. Now,
keep in mind, this was in 1624. What's interesting about this particular letter
is that it is almost verbatim to the same letter that Drebbel wrote to Piresque

(08:04):
in 1622. So, much like today's deleted tweets that never go away, Drebbel's
letter resurfaced long after this to lead some historians to question who
really invented the compound microscope. We'll be right back after a quick word
from my advertisers. Cesi knew he was on to something. On April 13th, 1625,

(08:29):
Galileo's friend Giovanni Faber wrote a letter to Cesi about this fascinating
tool that could magnify small items. In this letter, Faber referred to it as the
microscope, which is derived from the Greek words micron, which means small, and
microscopine, which means to look at. Hence, April 13th is the 395th birthday of the

(08:51):
word microscope. That same year, Cesi, along with scientist Francesco Stelluti,
published their work Appiarium, which included their microscopic observations
of three bees. It was the first published work that depicted microscopic
observations of biological structures. This was the beginning of 395 years of

(09:14):
microscope development. In 1665, English physicist Robert Hooke, using his
microscope to look at tissue, coined the term cells. Around 1674, Antony van Leeuwenhoek,
a Dutch scientist, emerged onto the scene with lenses that he created by
grinding and polishing a glass ball into a lens. These magnifying lenses had 270

(09:38):
times the magnification. With his groundbreaking lenses, he was able to see
and describe living cells, such as bacteria, blood cells, and yeast. Then, by
1846, Carl Zeiss was mass-producing these microscopes. But his mass production
really picked up when physicist Dr. Ernst Abbe became the research director

(09:59):
at Zeiss Optical Works. While Abbe was at Zeiss, he created the Abbe sine condition,
which is an optical formula that presents the requirements for a lens to
satisfy if it is to form a sharp image, free from blurring. Abbe was the brains of
this operation, and he set Zeiss up for success, allowing Zeiss to become the

(10:20):
dominant microscope manufacturer of the 19th century. In 1869, Mary Somerville
published her work, Molecular and Microscopic Science. She wrote this in
her 80s. In 1897, American zoologist Catherine Foote and Ella Church Strobel,
who worked as research partners in the field, initiated the practice of

(10:41):
photographing microscopic research samples. These two awesome ladies also
created a new technique of observing thin material samples in colder
temperatures. Finally, in the 20th century, in 1931, Ernst Ruska and Max
Knoll designed and built the first transmission electron microscope,
otherwise known as the first TEM. The TEM required electrons, not light, to see an

(11:06):
object. So now we're getting into microscopes that can see objects that
are as small as an atom. From this point forward, the development of microscopes
allowed us to see and analyze microscopic objects that we never
thought possible. In 1932, Fritz Zernike developed the phase contrast in
illumination that allowed us to image transparent samples. He won the Nobel

(11:27):
Prize for this in 1953. In 1957, Marvin Minsky patented the confocal microscope,
which uses a scanning pinhole of light to provide a higher resolution in scanned
images. In 1967, Erwin Wilhelm Muller created a microscope that was an atom
probe and was able to identify the chemical makeup of individual atoms. Kind

(11:51):
of cool. In 1972, Godfrey Hounsfield and Alan Cormack developed the first
computerized axial tomography CAT scan. In 1981, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohmer
developed the first scanning tunneling microscope. Five years later, in 1986,
Binnig, along with Calvin Quate and Christoph Gerber, invented the atomic

(12:13):
force microscope. The same year, Ruska, Binnig, and Rohmer jointly won the Nobel
Prize in physics for their work. In 1988, Kingo Itaya invented the electrochemical
scanning tunneling microscope. In 1991, the Calvin probe force microscope was
invented. Then, in 2009, Dame Pratibha Gai made groundbreaking progress with her

(12:36):
invention of the in-situ atomic resolution environmental transmission
electron microscope, known as the ETEM. Her microscope allowed for observations
of chemical reactions at an atomic scale. What I just love about her is that she
decided not to patent her invention in order to further the advancement of

(13:00):
science. So, by 2010, researchers at UCLA were using a cryo-electron microscope and
were able to see the atoms of a virus. By the 20 teens, we were able to see matter
that is smaller than 0.2 micrometers. It's really exciting that we now live in
a time where we have so much amazing technology that can help us see

(13:22):
microscopic living matter and help us understand how this virus attacks. So, to
my point, this virus is not invisible. It's there, and it can be seen by
scientists and medical professionals who can then disseminate that information to
the public and explain the dangers of this virus that is taking the lives of
our loved ones. Thanks to microscopes, there is no confusion as to how this

(13:45):
virus is more dangerous than the common flu. There is no questioning as to how
this virus gets into our systems and attacks our immune system. In this case,
there is nothing more sound and more reliable than science. Scientists are not
on a mission to destroy our economy. During this pandemic, our medical
professionals and scientists have proven to be the most altruistic group of

(14:09):
individuals fighting to save our lives. They are risking their own lives to keep
us alive, and they are relying on us to keep them alive by making choices to stay
home, stay healthy, and not spread this disease. So, on that note, please trust
the scientists who can see this virus and who can find an effective and safe

(14:30):
anti-vaccine. And please, stay healthy my friends. You mean the world to me. Until
next week, carpe diem.
So, back when I first published this episode in 2020, microscopes were already
in a golden age of imaging, pushing boundaries with super resolution and

(14:50):
digital integration. But the last few years have added some really fascinating
developments. First, artificial intelligence has entered the scene in a
big way. Today, some microscopes use augmented reality displays that overlay
AI-generated insights directly into the eyepiece or screen. So, imagine looking

(15:12):
at a specimen slide, and in real time, the microscope highlights suspicious cells
or calculates measurements for you. This has already been transformative in
medical diagnostics, especially for cancer detection. Second, microscopes are
getting smaller and more mobile without losing power. Researchers have developed

(15:33):
handheld and field-ready devices capable of imaging live specimens outside of the
lab. There are even miniscope models weighing just a couple of grams that can
record neural activity in freely moving animals, opening new doors for behavioral
neuroscience. And then third, the resolution has reached astonishing levels.

(15:55):
This is so exciting. MinFlux nanoscopy, for example, can now pinpoint molecules
with precision down to just a few nanometers, about the size of a small
protein. Expansion microscopy techniques have also improved, physically enlarging
biological samples so that even the tiniest cell structures become visible

(16:16):
with standard optics. Then there's the push for low-damage, high-speed imaging.
Light sheet microscopy now captures living cells at up to a thousand times the speed
of older scanning methods, while minimizing the light exposure that can harm delicate
samples. Quantum-enhanced imaging techniques are even being explored to get

(16:38):
clearer views with less light. This is important for studying fragile biological
processes. Digital microscopy has also surged, with ultra-high-resolution slide
scanning allowing scientists to collaborate remotely as if they were peering through
the same lens in the same lab. This has been a major step forward for global research

(17:00):
collaboration, education, and even telemedicine. So while the microscope has been
around for over 400 years, it's still evolving rapidly and shaping the way we
see the microscopic world. Thank you for listening to Math Science History.
Stay tuned for next week with all new podcasts, starting with the story of Marie

(17:22):
Tharp and how she mapped the Atlantic Ridge. Until next time, carpe diem.
Thank you for tuning in to Math Science History. If you enjoyed today's episode,
please leave a quick rating and review. They really help the podcast. You can find our
transcripts at mathsciencehistory.com. And while you're there, remember to click on that

(17:46):
coffee button because every dollar you donate supports a portion of our production costs
and keeps our educational website free. Again, thank you for tuning in. And until next time,
carpe diem.