TOP ROW, L TO R: JAN HUISKEN AND ERNST STELZER; ZEISS MICROSCOPY. MIDDLE ROW, L TO R: STEFFEN LINDEK AND ERNST STELZER; COURTESY OF DR. JAN MICHELS, INSTITUTE OF ZOOLOGY, CHRISTIAN-ALBRECHTS-UNIVERSITÄT ZU KIEL, KIEL, GERMANY; ZEISS MICROSCOPY. BOTTOM ROW: HISTORY OF MEDICINE (IHM)
In 1983, Ernst Stelzer joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, intending to do his doctoral research on membrane protein dynamics. Soon, he picked up a side project: developing one of the first confocal fluorescent microscopes. Stelzer and his colleagues designed a device with a pinhole that filtered out-of-focus layers of laser light to create thin “optical sections”—as opposed to physical slices—of a thick sample (J Microsc, 138:29-34, 1985). It was the first time anyone had been able to image intact tissue in three dimensions.
Stelzer recalls taking an entire day to capture four images of baby hamster kidney cells. In addition to prepping the sample and focusing the microscope over the tissue, he had to transfer the resulting images from the ...
