microscopy

AI is giving electron microscopes superhuman vision—resolving atomic structures, identifying defects, and automating analyses that once took weeks.

Deep learning now outlines cells, restores noisy images, predicts fluorescent labels, and turns cell photos into numbers. Here is how, and where it breaks.

How Ramón y Cajal's microscopy revealed neurons as individual cells composing the nervous system

In the 1670s, Anton van Leeuwenhoek ground tiny lenses and became the first human to see microorganisms — bacteria, protozoa, and sperm cells. His observations opened the microbial world and laid the groundwork for germ theory.

In 1665, Robert Hooke looked at thin cork slices through an early microscope and drew tiny box-like chambers he called 'cells.' Two centuries later, that sketch became one of biology's three founding laws.