James Hillier and Albert Prebus (Electron Microscope)
James Hillier, one of the entrepreneurs of the electron microscope, was born on August 22nd, 1915 in Brantford, Ontario. He attended the University of Toronto, where he received a PhD in 1941. After graduating, Hillier spent most of his career at the Radio Corporation of America (or RCA), discovering the principle of stigmator, which is used to correct astigmatism in a microanalyser, while being the first person to picture tobacco mosaic viruses and an ultra-thin section of a single bacterium. He often discussed the importance of needing to relate technology to the economy, mainly because he thought that technology played a large part in discovering and seeing today’s major social problems. Although he is known for being a famous Canadian entrepreneur, he often talked about his dislike for his business/entrepreneurial plans and research plans as a scientist overlapping and getting in the way of one another. James Hillier died on January 15th, 2007 in Princeton, NJ.
Albert Prebus was the second scientist involved in the re-creation and entrepreneurial making of the electron microscope in North America continent in the year 1938. He attended the University of Toronto with his friend and partner, James Hillier, as part of the Physics Department. Albert Prebus died on December 16th, 1997. James Hillier and Albert Prebus spent their most of their time in the University of Toronto building a prototype of the electron microscope, which would be used for later versions of it in the future. While James Hillier was working at the Radio Corporation of America, he also developed and perfected the device using the previous prototype. Both Hillier and Prebus manufactured the parts of the device themselves, and, naming the experiment and development “strictly a string and beeswax operation”, it took the two scientists months to complete the microscope.
Since the microscope had been