When microscopes were invented around 1600 C.E., natural philosophers turned their eyes onto a world within a world. When Antony van Leeuwenhoek crafted small, highly-curved lenses and a mechanical holder for adjusting the view, he opened a window onto the microscopic world of bacteria, blood cells, protozoa and the cellular structure of plants. But throughout the history of microscopy, there has always been one question: What are these strange things seen through a lens? Fluorescence microscopy refers to a set of techniques that minimizes that uncertainty – because in fluorescence microscopy when light is shone on a sample, it shines its own light right back. Writer Bio
