Ernst Ruska
Ernst August Friedrich Ruska was a pioneering German physicist recognized for his groundbreaking work in electron microscopy. Born in Heidelberg, he pursued studies in electronics at the Technical Universities of Munich and Berlin. His early career included roles as a research engineer, where he gained practical experience that would inform his later innovations. In 1933, Ruska constructed the first operational electron microscope, which utilized revolutionary principles of electron lens technology. This invention marked a significant departure from traditional light microscopy, allowing scientists to visualize minute structures within both organic and inorganic materials.
His contributions to the field of microscopy were further solidified when he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986, honoring his role in advancing electron microscopy. The development of electron microscopes opened new avenues in various scientific disciplines, significantly impacting fields such as medicine, materials science, and space research by enhancing our understanding of cellular structure and molecular composition. Even after his retirement, Ruska's legacy continued to influence modern research methodologies, as many institutions around the world utilized electron microscopy for groundbreaking studies. His work remains foundational in the evolution of advanced microscopy techniques, which have embraced technological advancements in the decades since his initial breakthroughs.
Ernst Ruska
German electrical engineer
- Born: December 25, 1906
- Birthplace: Heidelberg, Germany
- Died: May 30, 1988
- Place of death: West Berlin, West Germany (now Berlin, Germany)
Ruska’s pioneer work leading to the invention of the electron microscope made it possible for researchers in various fields of science, ranging from biology through medicine and chemistry, to develop much more precise knowledge of the microscopic world of organic cells and until-then mysterious structures of inorganic material.
Primary fields: Electronics and electrical engineering; physics
Primary invention: Electron microscope
Early Life
Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (ehrnst OW-goost FREE-drihk ROOS-kah) was the fifth of seven children born to Julius Ruska and Elisabeth Ruska, née Merx. After finishing his early education in the famous university city of Heidelberg, Ruska went in 1925 to the Bavarian capital in Munich, where he studied electronics for two years at the Technical University of Munich. He completed these studies after 1927 at the Technical University in Berlin. His first practical working experience was gained as a research engineer, first at Brown-Boveri and Company in Mannheim, then at Fernseh AG in Berlin, and then with one of the future giants of the emerging electronics industry, Siemens and Halske, also in Berlin. By that time, Siemens and Halske, which had been involved in telegraphy and undersea telegraphic cable communications as well as electric tramway motors in the late nineteenth century, was becoming more and more engaged in the diverse applications of electrical engineering that would make it famous in the twentieth century.
Ruska’s studies in Berlin had involved him in research under Adolf Matthias, director of the Institute of High Voltage. Matthias’s doctoral students contributed to increasing knowledge of scientific instruments that would be quite relevant to Ruska’s later development of the electron microscope, most notably in perfecting early models of the cathode-ray oscilloscope.
Life’s Work
By the time he completed more advanced studies and received his doctoral degree in 1934, Ruska had developed scientific knowledge related to new approaches to microscopy. In a statement presented when he received the Nobel Prize in 1986, he mentioned his interest in 1929 in a contemporary physicist’s (Hans Busch’s) as yet unproven “theory of the effect of the magnetic field of a coil of wire through which an electric current is passed and which is then used as an electron lens.” Within two years, Ruska, collaborating with his colleague Max Knoll, produced a preliminary model of a microscope incorporating the two principles that would become essential to his own ultimate success in breaking free of light-wave technology in microscopy and creating electron-lens technology with unparalleled short focal lengths: emission and radiation.
In 1933, the year in which he built the first operative electron microscope, Ruska began four years of employment with Fernseh, a German firm pioneering early television technology and photoelectric cells. He then moved to Siemens and Halske, where the Laboratory for Electron Optics was established and produced the first marketable electron microscope, named the Siemens Super Microscope. Siemens and Halske continued to support scientific collaboration on electronic microscopy throughout the period of World War II. Despite Germany’s defeat, in 1945 more than thirty scientific institutions were using electron microscopes, a fact that suggests continued scientific exchanges between researchers even during the global conflict.
Four years of reconstruction made it possible for Ruska and his colleagues to begin developing a new generation of electron microscopes. Their work culminated in 1954 when Elmiskop 1 was introduced. Over the next few decades, this perfected electron microscope would become vital to the work of more than one thousand scientific institutions around the world.
After being named to posts at several prestigious institutions—most notably the institute that became the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin—Ruska was named (within the same institute) director of the Institute for Electron Microscopy. He held this post between 1957 and 1974, the year of his retirement.
In 1986, only two years before his death, Ernst Ruska was awarded one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of his pioneer contribution to electron microscopy. Two other German scientists, Gerg Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, divided the honor of the other half of the 1986 Nobel Prize for their development of a later, somewhat distinct device of advanced microscopy—the scanning tunneling microscope.
Impact
The development of electron microscopy—which led to the technology that produced electron scanning microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopy—opened new horizons for scientific research in a number of fields. Electron microscopy made it possible to view a significant portion of the minuscule elements composing both organic and inorganic matter. Increased knowledge of the structure of cells and of the basic molecular composition of a large number of inorganic materials held out the promise of unparalleled advances in a variety of scientific and commercial fields. Advances in the field of space technology, for example, have ranged from the design of materials for use in the construction of space vehicles and equipment used to undertake space research to sophisticated analysis of samples of materials brought back to Earth from space missions.
Electron microscopy in several fields connected with medicine and genetic research continues to grow hand in hand with the development of specialized areas (DNA research, for example) that would have been inconceivable without the increased levels of microscopic examination and analysis that began with the work of Ruska and others.
It is important to add that, with the increasing sophistication of computer-driven research laboratories, it has become possible for researchers whose laboratories lack the expensive equipment needed for electron microscopy to benefit from high-resolution images from other laboratories transmitted over the Internet.
Bibliography
Lobastov, Vladimir A., Ramesh Srinivasan, and Ahmed H. Zewail. “Four-Dimensional Ultrafast Electron Microscopy.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, no. 20 (May 17, 2005): 7069-7073. A technical account of continuing research making it possible to expand the technological boundaries of electron microscopy far beyond limits conceivable in Ruska’s generation.
Rüdenberg, R. “The Early History of the Electron Microscope.” Journal of Applied Physics 14 (1943): 434-436. A brief account of the progress of research in electron microscopy that demonstrates the degree to which the scientific community attempted to maintain channels of objective communication despite conditions of war (when Ruska’s work was being carried on inside Hitler’s Germany).
Ruska, Ernst. The Early Development of Electron Lenses and Electron Microscopy. Stuttgart, Germany: S. Hirzel Verlag, 1980. An English translation of Ruska’s quite extensive, and somewhat specialized, description of his work. This extensive article includes an introduction and sixteen topical sections ranging from coverage of the principles of magnification using light optical lenses through discussions of the contributions of electron microscopy to biological and medical research.
Stokes, Debbie J. “Recent Advances in Electron Imaging, Image Interpretation and Applications: Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy.” Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 361, no. 1813 (December 15, 2003): 2771-2787. Like the 2005 article by Lobastov and his colleagues, this article stresses evolving technology in electron microscopy. Discusses environmental scanning electron microscopy, which involves the possibility of examining specimens even under conditions of surrounding humidity.