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Antonie van Leeuwenhoek developed ways to make superior lenses by grinding and polishing a glass ball into a lens with a magnification of 270x.
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Lister developed an "achromatic" lens which atoned a distortion called "chromatic aberration". The achromatic lens encouraged scientists to accept the microscope as a reliable tool for medical research.
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The advancement of the microscope to the ultramicroscope allowed observation of specimens below the wavelength of light.
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With Frits Xernike's invention of the phase-contrast microscope, transparent biological materials are studied for the first time.
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Just six years after the invention of the phase-contrast microscope comes the electron microscope,developed by Ruska, who realized that using electrons in microscopy enhanced resolution.
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Binnig and Rohrer were recognized for developing the powerful microscopy technique that forms an image of individual atoms on a metal or semiconductor surface by scanning the tip of a needle over the surface at a height of only a few atomic diameters.