Joseph Jackson Lister - Microscopy

Microscopy

J. J. Lister was deeply interested in natural history, and realised that the microscopes available in the early 19th century did not provide adequate resolution to reveal the structure of plant cells and animal cells in sufficient detail. He therefore set about to design and construct achromatic lenses of superior performance, combining lenses of crown and flint glasses of different dispersion, in order to cancel chromatic aberration, showing that spherical aberration could be minimised by the correct separation of the lens combinations, which led to the perfection of the optical microscope. He performed this work in his spare time, while fully engaged in his wine business. He began this work in 1824, and by 1826 he had commissioned an improved microscope stand to be made by the instrument-making firm of William Tulley.

The stand was made by an employee of Tulley, James Smith, and is preserved in the Wellcome Institute. Smith set up on his own in 1837, later taking on Richard Beck, a nephew of Lister, as an apprentice finally becoming a partner in 1847 when the company was renamed Smith & Beck. . Lister published his work in 1830 in a paper entitled "On Some Properties in Achromatic Object-Glasses Applicable to the Improvement of the Microscope" submitted to the Royal Society, and collaborated with Smith and with Andrew Ross, who had established what was to become one of the finest microscope manufacturers in 1832. Lister's law of aplanatic foci remained the underlying principle of microscopic science.

He had a large circle of scientific contacts, including Airy, Herschel and fellow Quaker Dr Thomas Hodgkin, with whom he discussed microscopic observations including those of red blood cells, leading to the identification of 'Hodgkin's disease’. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1832. His interest continued, writing a paper in 1843, entitled ‘On the Limit to Defining Power in Vision with the Unassisted Eye, the Telescope and the Microscope’. It was never published, but years later it was presented by his son Lord Lister to the Royal Microscopical Society, and seen to have anticipated many of the later discoveries made by Ernst Abbe and others.