History of the MSA

For its first 50 years, our Society was devoted to the electron microscope. For those interested in more details, the best source is Sterling Newberry’s book EMSA and its People — the First Fifty Years. This book was published in 1992 by the Electron Microscopy Society of America, and given to each attendee of the 1992 Annual Meeting in Boston. A few copies are still available from large booksellers.

Overcoming the limitations of the light microscope was especially important for biological studies, which was the major use of the electron microscope (EM) after its invention in 1931-2 by Ruska and Knoll. An excellent book on the development of biological EM in the USA is Picture Control — The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940-1960 by Nicolas Rasmussen (Stanford University Press).

Today, tremendous advances in light microscopic methods have shifted many biological applications away from EM, while the importance of EM in nanotechnology and materials science has steadily grown over the last twenty years. As a result, EM applications are now rather evenly balanced between biological and materials applications. MSA has become more diverse, going beyond EM to encompass the full range of microscopic and analytical techniques, and providing a home for microscopists in all fields of study.

The first meeting of Electron Microscope Society of America (EMSA) was held January 14-15, 1944, at Columbia University, New York City. The following officers were elected:

President: R. Bowling Barnes
Vice president: James Hillier
Secretary-Treasurer: M. Charles Banca
Directors (three years): R. D. Heidenreich, T. F. Anderson,
Directors (two years): L. L. Marton, David Harker,
Directors (one year): O. S. Duffendack, V. K. Zworykin

In 1947, an electron microscopy conference (not the EMSA meeting, which was held in Philadelphia that year) was hosted by E. F. Burton at University of Toronto (Fig. 4). Burton passed away not long after this conference. The 1948 EMSA meeting, the Burton Memorial Meeting, was held at the University of Toronto (Fig. 5).

The 1950 meeting was at the Statler Hotel, Detroit, September 14-16 (Fig. 6). At this meeting, president Wycoff suggested that the Society should be disbanded. His rationale was that the Society had been formed as an association of people involved in the development of the electron microscope, and he felt that by this time the interest was more in applications than instrument development. Nevertheless, yearly meetings continued (Fig. 7). Eventually, in 1964, this change was reflected in a name change from Electron Microscope Society to Electron Microscopy Society (Fig. 8). A major source of strength of the Society has always been the cross-discipline nature of the applications of microscopy, not only the development of the instrument itself.

For the 1949 meeting, EMSA invited representatives of European microscopy societies, and was encouraged to start an informal association of worldwide societies. Eventually, this was reflected in The International Federation of Societies for Electron Microscopy (IFSEM), which EMSA joined in 1956.

The 25th anniversary meeting was held at the Sheraton Hotel, Chicago, August 29 - September 1, 1967. Presided over by Charter Member Joseph Comer, the meeting was marked by special symposia summarizing the state of the art in the various applications of electron microscopy:

Cytology | F. S. Sjöstrand
Molecular Biology | Cecil Hall
Medicine | H. Stanley Bennett
Chemistry | John Turkevich
Materials Science | Gareth Thomas
Electron Microscopy in the Future | H. Fernández-Morán

The Proceedings of the early meetings were published in the Journal of Applied Physics, but in 1967 the Proceedings were published for the first time in book form, with G. W. Bailey on the editorial staff.

The first joint EMSA-IFSEM meeting (ICEM-9) was held at the University of Toronto, August 1-9, 1978, on the 40th anniversary of the first successful electron microscope in North America. Special honorary degrees from the University, the birthplace of that microscope, were presented to these pioneers of electron microscopy. A joint EMSA-IFSEM meeting was again held in 1990, in Seattle.

The 50th anniversary EMSA meeting was held August 16-21, 1982, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. A highlight of this meeting was the attendance of as many of the Charter Members of EMSA, and as many of the Past Presidents, as possible, as well as other microscopy luminaries including Ernst Ruska. Video interviews with long-time members and other outstanding scientists were conducted during the preceding months, and a special 2-hour videotape was produced. In addition, a commemorative book "EMSA and its People: The First Fifty Years" was given to each registrant. Both the book and the interviews were the work of Sterling Newberry, himself a Charter Member, with the help of many others.

On January 1, 1993, the Society changed its name for the second time, from the Electron Microscopy Society of America to the Microscopy Society of America. This reflects the increasing diversity of microscopy and microanalysis techniques and applications presented at the meetings and in MSA publications.