One of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century was the invention of the laser. Since its construction in 1960, the laser has been instrumental in the development of new techniques in numerous fields. One of the first applications of laser technology was holography, a process whose principles were laid out more than a decade before the first laser was ever built.

In the 1940s, Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-born scientist working in England, was not allowed to work on the major research areas of the time; most of the scientific community was concentrating upon the war effort, especially upon the development of radar. A foreigner, Gabor was barred from these experiments, which were all classified as top secret. Instead, he labored to improve the budding field of electron microscopy.

At the time, electron microscopes were severely limited in their ability to resolve images at very high magnitudes...