The German engineer Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (1906-1988) designed and built the first electron microscope, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986.

The electron microscope, like many other complex technological developments based upon current scientific research, cannot be associated exclusively with a single inventor. In the early 1930s several laboratories were at work on a super-microscope that would use electron waves, instead of light waves, to magnify a microscopic specimen. However, it is generally agreed that the German engineer Ernst Ruska designed and built the first working electron microscopes (1931-1933). Ruska's contribution to the science of physics, and to its applications in the fields of biology and medicine, was recognized in 1986 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize along with two other pioneers of modern microscopy, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer.

Ernst August Friedrich Ruska was born in Heidelberg, Germany, on December 15, 1906. His immediate...