Crystal gazing in optical microscopy

Abstract

For most of the three centuries after Hooke introduced optical microscopy, refinement of the instrumentation and approach made microscopes more convenient than anything else. A modern reader of Hooke's classic treatise Micrographia (ca. 1655) has no problem in visualizing the instrument employed; as in modern microscopes, a light source, an objective lens and an eyepiece were used to project an image magnified a 100-fold to a 1,000-fold into a human eye. This range of magnifications and resolution (~200 nm) has brought cellular morphology and tissue structure into view and made optical microscopy the perfect partner for biological investigation.