Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology, Arthur Amos Noyes Laboratory of Chemical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2010 Mar 13;368(1914):1191-204. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2009.0265.
In this paper, the evolutionary and revolutionary developments of microscopic imaging are overviewed with a perspective on origins. From Alhazen's camera obscura, to Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek's two-dimensional optical micrography, and on to three- and four-dimensional (4D) electron microscopy, these developments over a millennium have transformed humans' scope of visualization. The changes in the length and time scales involved are unimaginable, beginning with the visible shadows of candles at the centimetre and second scales, and ending with invisible atoms with space and time dimensions of sub-nanometre and femtosecond. With these advances it has become possible to determine the structures of matter and to observe their elementary dynamics as they unfold in real time. Such observations provide the means for visualizing materials behaviour and biological function, with the aim of understanding emergent phenomena in complex systems.
本文从起源的角度概述了微观成像的演变和革命发展。从阿尔哈曾的暗箱，到胡克和列文虎克的二维光学显微镜，再到三维和四维（4D）电子显微镜，这一千年来的发展改变了人类的可视化范围。所涉及的长度和时间尺度的变化是难以想象的，从厘米和秒尺度的可见烛光阴影开始，到纳米和飞秒尺度的不可见原子结束。随着这些进步，人们已经能够确定物质的结构，并观察它们在实时展开时的基本动力学。这些观察为可视化材料行为和生物功能提供了手段，旨在理解复杂系统中的涌现现象。
