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Electron Microscope
James Hillier was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada on August
22, 1915. He was interested in art as a youngster, and first
believed he would pursue a career as an artist, but his natural
talent for math and physics won him a scholarship to the University
of Toronto. That's where he and fellow student Albert
Prebus would build the world's first practical electron microscope.
Hillier received his B.A. in Mathematics and Physics in
1937 and stayed on at the University of Toronto to pursue
graduate studies. He and Prebus were students when in 1937
they assembled a model of a microscope that could magnify
7,000 times—much greater than the 2,000 times magnification
produced by optical microscopes used at that time. This machine
passed a beam of electrons, rather than a beam of light, through
a specimen. The beam would then be focused on a photographic
plate. A theory developed 15 years earlier by a German physicist
had suggested that an electron microscope could have a resolving
power much better than a light microscope, and Hillier and
Prebus' machine proved this to be true. Since electrons' wavelength
is smaller than the wavelength of light, greater magnification
and depth of focus was indeed possible. The images created
by this new type of microscope were as clear as an image on
a modern television screen.
In 1938 Hillier received his M.A. from the University of
Toronto, and in 1941 he completed his Ph.D. He was hired immediately
by Radio Corporation of American (RCA) in Camden, New Jersey,
which employed him to work with a group to build the company's
first commercial electron microscope. He worked on developing
the microscope for more than a decade, expanding its application,
improving its resolution, and helping to make the electron
microscope standard equipment in labs, hospitals, and universities
around the world. Eventually magnification would improve to
10,000 times.
Hillier, who became a U.S. citizen in 1945, worked as a research
engineer at RCA until 1953. He briefly joined Malpar, Inc.,
as research director, then returned to RCA in 1954 where he
became the general manager of RCA Laboratories in Princeton,
New Jersey in 1957. He was eventually promoted to executive
vice president and senior scientist of RCA Labs.
In addition to his work on the electron microscope, Hillier
also accomplished major developments related to the fields
of medicine and biology, including his discovery of the principle
of the stigmator for correcting astigmatism of electron microscope
objective lenses; his invention of the electron microprobe
microanalyser; and his being the first to picture tobacco
mosaic viruses and an ultra-thin section of a single bacterium.
He retired from RCA in 1977.
Over the course of his career Hillier was awarded 40 patents
and numerous accolades, including the American Public Health
Association's Albert Lasker Award in Medical Research in 1960,
the IEEE David Sarnoff Award in 1967, the Industrial Research
Institute Medal in 1975, induction into the U.S. National
Inventors Hall of Fame in 1980, and the IEEE Founders Medal
in 1980.
Hillier, who, as of this writing (May 2003), lives in New
Jersey with his wife, Florence, is a Fellow of the American
Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers. He is also a member of Sigma Xi and the National
Academy of Engineering. In addition, he established the James
Hillier Foundation, which awards scholarships to promising
science students from his hometown of Brantford.
[May 2003]
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