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Solvay Institute archival letters

Posted by: Joachim Frank  |  December 6, 2013  |  9 Comments

During my attendance of the 2013 Solvay Conference in Chemistry, I met Dr. Franklin Lambert, Professor of Theoretical Physics emeritus, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Solvay Institutes, Belgium, who kindly introduced me at the Public Lecture.  Later Dr. Lambert gave me copies of archival material of the Solvay Institute, all related to electron microscopy.  These letters are quite interesting since they relate to the very beginning of electron microscopy, when its utility in biology was still controversial.

Over the 100 years of its existence, the Solvay Institute has funded a large number of scientific projects it deemed worthy of support.  In 1933 Dr. Ladislas Marton, an early pioneer in electron microscopy, approached the Institute with a request for 12,000 Francs in support of construction of an instrument.  The Solvay Institute approached Albert Einstein, Ernst Ruska, Arnold Sommerfeld, and Peter Debye for opinions on this request.  Here are copies of these letters in German or French, along with my (and in the case of Debye, Yaser’s) informal English translations.


Oxford 10. VI. 33.
Dear Mr. Lefébure!
Due to my large load of correspondence I was unable to reply to you earlier in the matters relating to Mr. Marton’s request [for funds].
I deem the execution of such experiments desirable and also have no doubt about the competence of the applicant.
Unless other points of view may have to be considered, I therefore recommend funding the proposal.
With best regards,
Albert Einstein

 


Dr. Ing. E. Ruska
Berlin-Zehlendorf
28. X. 1934.
Dear Doctor,
I have been asked by the journal of the Association of German Engineers to write an essay about the applications of the electron microscope, and would be delighted if you could provide me with one or two negatives of preferably new images of high quality, relating to any organic samples. Of course your work would receive explicit credit. If even better images become available in the next days, it would still be fine if I could receive these by the end of November.
With best greetings, yours truly
E. Ruska

 


Letter addressed to Professor Piccard.
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Munich.
20. July 1934.
Esteemed Colleague,
Dr. Scherzer, who is writing a book on Electron Microscopy with Bruche, has been asked, together with me, to write a brief article on the same subject for the Munich Medical Weekly News. He has learned that one of your assistants has obtained beautiful images of organic objects using electron beams. Would you be so kind as to provide a sample of these images for the Munich Medical Weekly News? The images we have access to relate mainly to cathodes, which have little interest for scholars of medicine, compared to actual images of biological material. If you could assist us with this request, we will express our gratitude in writing, as a matter of course.
With friendly greetings,
Yours truly,
A. Sommerfeld

 


Institute of Physics
of the University
Linnéstrasse 5
Leipzig
24 May 1933.
To the Solvay International Institute of Chemistry,
Brussels
Dear Colleague,
From a theoretical point of view, it seems quite possible to construct an electron microscope through which one could see more details than through an ordinary microscope, which only uses the large wavelengths of the ordinary light. The difficulty of the construction is mainly technical. It seems that Mr. Marton is a skilful man. Hence, given the general interest in the proposed construction, I am all in favor of granting the request of funding of 12,000 Francs.
Please accept, dear colleague, the expression of my most sincere and devoted feelings.
P. Debye 
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9 Comments for Solvay Institute archival letters


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Cheri

I’d love to see these exemplary images!

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Rouslan Efremov

These are fantastic documents! Thank you for sharing them, Joachim. Do you know if the microscope Marton used for imaging biological samples still exists somewhere?

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    Joachim Frank

    I don’t know; this is the first time I came across Bill Morton.

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Konrad Wicher

Joachim, Thank you for the very interesting archival material on the history of EM. This info clarifies from where Ladislaus (Bill) Morton got money for bilding in 1933 a transmission EM with two iron-clad lens coils capable of magnifying 1,000x. Joachim You provided a very valuable information. Congratulation, Konrad

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    Joachim Frank

    Thanks, Konrad. I think by now Mike Marko must have built up a substantial archive in the MSA.

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Sanchaita

This is a very unique collection of letters. loved the one from Einstein.

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