Electron microscope developer dead at 91

James Hillier died of a stroke at University Medical Center in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 15. Hillier was a student at the University of Toronto in 1938 when he and fellow graduate student Albert Prebus furthered the work of German engineers Ernst Ruska and Reinhold Rudenberg to produce the first commercially successful electron microscope for use in medical research. The device magnified objects three times more than existing optical microscopes. By the end of the 1940s, the magnification power had jumped to 200,000 times. Hillier graduated with a doctorate in physics in 1941 and became the director of RCA's Princeton research laboratories in 1958, the company he pitched his prototype to in 1940. His tenure at RCA lasted until 1977, during which he oversaw the development of lasers, transistors, and liquid crystal displays. In 1997, he was decorated with the Order of Canada, among that country's highest honors. Hillier, who became an American citizen in 1945, was 91.

Sources: Yahoo News, LATimes.com