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.