Milestones

The history of electron microscopy

1897 Discovery of the electron by J.J. Thompson

1924 P. De Broglie: particle/wave dualism

1927 Hans Busch: electron beams can be focused in an inhomogeneous magnetic field.

1931 Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll built the first TEM

1938 First scanning transmission electron microscope (M. von Ardenne)

1939 First commercial TEM by Siemens (E. Ruska, B. von Borries)

~1940 Basic theoretical work on electron optics and electron lenses (W. Glaser, O. Scherzer)

1943 Electron energy-loss spectroscopy EELS (J. Hillier)

1948 First TEM at ETH Zurich (report)

1951 X-ray spectroscopy (R. Castaing)

1956 First lattice image (J. Menter)

1957 Multi-slice method (J. Cowley, A. Moodie)

1964 First commercial SEM by Cambridge Instruments

~1970 First HRTEM microscopes with a resolution better than 4 Å

1986 Nobel prize for E. Ruska (together with G. Binning and H. Rohrer, who developed the Scanning Tunneling Microscope)

~2000 Development of aberration-corrected TEM (H. Rose, M. Haider, K. Urban)

~2003 Aberration-corrected HRTEM microscopes reach sub-Ångstrøm resolution (external page review)