18 Facts About Albert Crewe

Albert Victor Crewe was a British-born American physicist and inventor of the modern scanning transmission electron microscope capable of taking still and motion pictures of atoms, a technology that provided new insights into atomic interaction and enabled significant advances in and had wide-reaching implications for the biomedical, semiconductor, and computing industries.

Albert Crewe had average grades in school but passed two nationwide examinations, the first of which enabled him to become the first in his family to attend high school and the second of which allowed him to attend college.

Albert Crewe attended Carlton Grammar School, in the south-east of Bradford, since 1977 called Carlton Bolling College.

Albert Crewe won a military scholarship to the University of Liverpool to pursue an undergraduate degree in physics, which he received in 1947.

Albert Crewe received a first class degree with high honors, which allowed him a scholarship to continue on at Liverpool for his Ph.

At the University of Liverpool, Albert Crewe worked with Professor Skinner, the Lyon Jones Chair of Physics.

That visit led to an invitation for Albert Crewe to go to the University of Chicago as a visiting research associate in 1955.

In 1958 Albert Crewe moved to the Argonne National Laboratory, in DuPage County, Illinois.

When Norman Hilberry, the director of Argonne, retired in 1961, Albert Crewe was asked to become the third director of the 5000 employee facility.

Albert Crewe saw ways in which it would be possible to improve the images important to that work.

Albert Crewe came up with a design for a scanning electron microscope and set up a group at Argonne to build it, getting it to function in 1963.

In 1964 Albert Crewe developed the first field emission electron gun in collaboration with Hitachi, a new type of electron source that enabled much higher optical quality than had previously been possible.

Albert Crewe held 19 patents for his inventions, and had more than 275 publications, most of them concerned with electron optics and electron microscopes.

Albert Crewe served as Dean of Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago from 1971 to 1981.

Albert Crewe continued to explore new methods of obtaining high resolution, and in 2003 developed a low voltage electron microscope using a dipole permanent magnet as a lens.

Albert Crewe's distinguished scientific career and his contribution to the use of technologies for wider applications have been recognized by numerous awards.

Albert Crewe won the Man of the Year Award for Industrial Research in 1970 and was awarded the Albert A Michelson Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1977 and the Distinguished Service Award of the Electron Microscope Society of America in 1976.

Albert Crewe became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1972.