Recognising a legacy for the community – Professor Kim Hardie reviews ‘Practical Electron Microscopy’
Posted on April 25, 2024 by Microbiology Society
In 2020 the Microbiology Society was generously left an extensive and wide-ranging selection of scientific works by long-standing member, Dr Bernard Dixon. Bernard was a well-known scientific communicator, perhaps most notably as the Editor of New Scientist in the 1970s.
We were honoured Bernard chose to leave his rare collection to us and Council agreed for the majority to be sold to a specialist book collector. The revenue generated was donated to our Unlocking Potential fund, the first grants from which have gone on to support ten microbiologists facing career-limiting challenges.
We retained a selection of the microbiology titles and recently invited Council members to select and review a book of their choice. We are releasing these reviews as a special series in recognition of all those who choose to leave the Society a legacy, as well as those who support our fundraising activity, including the Unlocking Potential Fund, in other ways.
We need the help of more people across our community to support others who might, in turn, one day provide solutions to global challenges. You can find out about leaving the Society a legacy or donating to Unlocking Potential or you can get in touch to talk to us about the Society’s fundraising activities.
In the first of this special blog series, Council member Professor Kim Hardie of the University of Nottingham reviews ‘Practical Electron Microscopy’ by V.E. Cosslett (published by Butterworths Scientific Publications Ltd, London. 1951).
I was drawn to this book on the back of a recent invitation to talk about how Microbiology and Microscopy have colluded to enable us to push the frontiers of discovery and document the invisible lifeforms amongst us. With the audience promising to consist of the general public with a tendency to be curious about philosophy and physics, this sparked in depth research into the optics of microscopes and many discoveries for this rather surreal experience amongst the enormous Dinosaur Fossils in the Natural History Museum at Oxford. How EM enabled us to understand why some bacteria are Positive and others Negative in Gram stains due to their double membrane for instance stuck in my mind. If you’re interested to find out how microscopy and microbiology have been moving forward together over the last 6000 years, you can read the associated publication in Journal of Physics: conference series.
As promised by its title, the bequeathed book on practical electron microscopy is a very detailed and informative account of the physical principals of the microscopes, and how to use the instruments. Clearly well used (as evidenced by the annotations), this book was obviously utilized to follow the protocols and deliver images from an Electron Microscope. Even photographs of the metal grids for sample mounting are included. This led me to investigate whether there was any evidence that Royall Tyler Moore had put this reading to good use. The discovery that he had indeed published key descriptions of fungi (which he was passionate about) that included Electron Micrographs confirmed this (Moore, RT. 1960. Fine Structure of Mycota 2. Demonstration of the haustoria of lichens. Mycologia 52(5): 805–807: Moore, RT. 1963. Fine Structure of Mycota XI. Occurrence of the golgi dictyosome in the heterobasidiomycete Puccinia podophylli. Journal of Bacteriology 86(4): 866-871). Since neither article cited the book, I was curious about its broader citation and the author’s credentials.
An early review of the book revealed that despite a number of preceding books on EM, it was unique in being tailored to the growing EM users, and fulfilled a definite need by providing practical suggestions for understanding the pros and cons of EM utilization. Overall, the reviewer’s verdict was that the book had ‘minor shortcomings’ but was ‘a really excellent book which should be recommended to all who are interested in practical electron microscopy’.
The author Vernon Ellis Cosslett FRS (1908-1990) was an Electron Microscopist at the University of Cambridge who made significant contributions to the advancement of this new technology and its application to revolutionizing our understanding of chemistry, biology, materials science and medicine, despite the disruption of two world wars.
The book can still be purchased on Amazon for <£10 if you’re interested to have a look yourself! The Microbiology Society is grateful to have the legacy of interesting books to spark parallel research into topics beyond our initial focus. In this way, Bernard Dixon has ensured that the study of microbiology continues to expand in accordance with his generous bequests to the Microbiology Society and other institutions including his former academic home, Cornell University.
Review kindly provided by Kim Hardie