The inventor of the electron microscope, Ernst Ruska, combined an academic career in physics and electrical engineering with work in private industry at several of Germany's top electrical corporations. He was associated with the Siemens Company from 1937 to 1955, where he helped mass produce the electron microscope, the invention for which he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in physics. The Nobel Prize Committee called Ruska's electron microscope one of the most important inventions of the twentieth century. The benefits of electron microscopy to the field of microbiology and medicine allow scientists to study such structures as viruses and protein molecules. Technical fields such as electronics have also found new uses for Ruska's invention: improved versions of the electron microscope became instrumental in the fabrication of computer chips.

Ruska was born in Heidelberg, Germany, on December 25, 1906. He was the fifth child of Julius Ferdinand Ruska, an Asian studies professor, and...