- Email: [email protected]
James Hillier
The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation
Obituary
James Hillier Physicist who developed the electron microscope. Born on Aug 22, 1915, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, he died after a stroke on Jan 15, 2007, in Princeton, NJ, USA, aged 91 years. When James Hillier became a graduate student in physics at the University of Toronto in the 1930s, “the concept of the electron microscope was really quite old…The origins went way back into the last century, and even the basic principles in which it could conceivably be built had it been thought through”, he recalled in a 1975 interview. But no one had created anything useful. Hillier and another graduate student, Albert Prebus, set out to build on the work of Cecil Hall, who had built two primitive emission-type electron microscopes. They realised they had to build a high-voltage transmission electron microscope, of which German scientists had previously built a primitive form. By April, 1938, they had an instrument that was “working”, Hillier said. “That is, we could get an electron beam through it, we could magnify an image of a hole in a piece of copper, and we could take photographs of them occasionally.” Within a year, that had evolved into a more consistent model that could magnify objects up to 8000–9000 times. Although World War II kept Hillier and Prebus from communicating with German scientists to compare their progress, by early 1939 the students had a home-made and finicky but effective instrument. “We began to get interested in what kind of uses we could make of it—what kind of objects we could examine 1162
with it”, Hillier later said. “As it turned out in later years, that was really the name of the game. The instrument was just a tool to enable you to look at things under high magnification. The real name of the game was to find out how to put significant things into it and how to prepare the specimens.” They started placing bacteria onto extremely thin colloid films so electrons could go through and not heat up the bacteria. Once Hillier and Prebus announced their capabilities to the world, they were bombarded with requests by laboratories. Hillier and Prebus soon realised they needed help making the technology widely available, and approached General Electric and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The pair ended up at RCA, and by 1940 Hillier had designed the RCA Model B, the first commercial electron microscope to be made available outside of Germany, where Siemens had hired Ernst Ruska to develop their own model. Hillier’s chief innovation was the astigmator, which allowed the user to tune the topics optimally, according to Nicolas Rasmussen, author of Picture Control: The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940–1960. Hillier and RCA worked with communities who were using the device, especially biologists. Wendell Stanley, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946, came with a vial of tobacco mosaic virus sometime around 1942 and left with surprising data and images that left him dazzled. Hillier and Prebus helped organise the Electron Microscope Society of America. Hillier also published a number of papers in biology. Electron microscopy has contributed to medicine in at least three areas, said Sara Miller, ex-president of the Microscopy Society of America and a virologist at Duke University School of Medicine: to describe normal ultrastructure, in diagnostic medicine to uncover diseases, and in teaching. “Ultrastructural investigation has been the mainstay of the understanding of the process of disease such as which organelles are affected in a disease state”, she said. The rapidity of specimen preparation, the lack of necessity for specific reagents, and the ability to visualise small objects mean that “Electron microscopy is an important tool in the surveillance of emerging diseases and potential bioterrorism agents”, Miller added. Hillier stayed on at RCA after his initial success. He left the electron microscopy work, and RCA, in 1953, but soon returned to the company and worked on other projects, eventually helping to develop videodiscs. Hillier shared the 1960 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Ruska for their contribution to the development of the electron microscope. He is survived by two sons, James and William. Hillier’s wife, Florence, predeceased him.
Ivan Oransky [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 369 April 7, 2007
Obituary
James Hillier Physicist who developed the electron microscope. Born on Aug 22, 1915, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, he died after a stroke on Jan 15, 2007, in Princeton, NJ, USA, aged 91 years. When James Hillier became a graduate student in physics at the University of Toronto in the 1930s, “the concept of the electron microscope was really quite old…The origins went way back into the last century, and even the basic principles in which it could conceivably be built had it been thought through”, he recalled in a 1975 interview. But no one had created anything useful. Hillier and another graduate student, Albert Prebus, set out to build on the work of Cecil Hall, who had built two primitive emission-type electron microscopes. They realised they had to build a high-voltage transmission electron microscope, of which German scientists had previously built a primitive form. By April, 1938, they had an instrument that was “working”, Hillier said. “That is, we could get an electron beam through it, we could magnify an image of a hole in a piece of copper, and we could take photographs of them occasionally.” Within a year, that had evolved into a more consistent model that could magnify objects up to 8000–9000 times. Although World War II kept Hillier and Prebus from communicating with German scientists to compare their progress, by early 1939 the students had a home-made and finicky but effective instrument. “We began to get interested in what kind of uses we could make of it—what kind of objects we could examine 1162
with it”, Hillier later said. “As it turned out in later years, that was really the name of the game. The instrument was just a tool to enable you to look at things under high magnification. The real name of the game was to find out how to put significant things into it and how to prepare the specimens.” They started placing bacteria onto extremely thin colloid films so electrons could go through and not heat up the bacteria. Once Hillier and Prebus announced their capabilities to the world, they were bombarded with requests by laboratories. Hillier and Prebus soon realised they needed help making the technology widely available, and approached General Electric and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The pair ended up at RCA, and by 1940 Hillier had designed the RCA Model B, the first commercial electron microscope to be made available outside of Germany, where Siemens had hired Ernst Ruska to develop their own model. Hillier’s chief innovation was the astigmator, which allowed the user to tune the topics optimally, according to Nicolas Rasmussen, author of Picture Control: The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940–1960. Hillier and RCA worked with communities who were using the device, especially biologists. Wendell Stanley, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946, came with a vial of tobacco mosaic virus sometime around 1942 and left with surprising data and images that left him dazzled. Hillier and Prebus helped organise the Electron Microscope Society of America. Hillier also published a number of papers in biology. Electron microscopy has contributed to medicine in at least three areas, said Sara Miller, ex-president of the Microscopy Society of America and a virologist at Duke University School of Medicine: to describe normal ultrastructure, in diagnostic medicine to uncover diseases, and in teaching. “Ultrastructural investigation has been the mainstay of the understanding of the process of disease such as which organelles are affected in a disease state”, she said. The rapidity of specimen preparation, the lack of necessity for specific reagents, and the ability to visualise small objects mean that “Electron microscopy is an important tool in the surveillance of emerging diseases and potential bioterrorism agents”, Miller added. Hillier stayed on at RCA after his initial success. He left the electron microscopy work, and RCA, in 1953, but soon returned to the company and worked on other projects, eventually helping to develop videodiscs. Hillier shared the 1960 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Ruska for their contribution to the development of the electron microscope. He is survived by two sons, James and William. Hillier’s wife, Florence, predeceased him.
Ivan Oransky [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 369 April 7, 2007