Ondrej Krivanek facts for kids
Ondrej L. Krivanek is a brilliant scientist from the Czech Republic who also became a British citizen. He is a physicist living in the United States. He is famous for creating amazing tools for electron microscopes. In 2020, he won the important Kavli Prize for Nanoscience. This award recognized his big improvements in electron microscopy, which help us see things at an atomic level.
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A Scientist's Journey
Ondrej L. Krivanek was born in Prague in 1950. He went to school there. In 1968, he moved to the UK. He studied at Leeds University and then earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Cambridge University. He became a British citizen in 1975.
Seeing Atoms Up Close
After his Ph.D., Ondrej worked at places like Kyoto University and UC Berkeley. Here, he became a top expert in high-resolution electron microscopy. He was one of the first to take pictures of tiny parts of materials. These pictures showed the arrangement of individual atoms. Imagine seeing the building blocks of everything!
Inventing New Tools
In the late 1970s, Ondrej started designing special tools. These were called electron energy loss (EEL) spectrometers and imaging filters. These tools help scientists understand what materials are made of. Over 500 of these tools are now used worldwide. He also helped create a software called DigitalMicrograph. This program is now the most popular one for electron microscopy. It helps scientists get and process images from microscopes.
Making Microscopes Even Better
One big problem in electron microscopy was "aberrations." This is like a blur that makes images unclear. Ondrej wanted to fix this. He worked with a team in Cambridge, UK. In 1997, they created the first "aberration corrector" for a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). This invention made the microscope images much clearer.
Starting Nion Company
Also in 1997, Ondrej and his colleague Niklas Dellby started their own company, Nion Co.. They designed a new type of corrector. In 2000, Nion delivered the first commercial electron microscope aberration corrector. Soon after, this corrector helped produce the first images that showed details smaller than an angstrom (a tiny unit of length). This meant they could see individual atoms directly!
Nion's microscopes have continued to break records. They can now map elements at an atomic level. This means they can identify every single atom in a material.
Exploring Vibrations of Atoms
In 2013, Nion introduced a new tool called a "monochromator." This tool helps scientists study how atoms vibrate. It can even detect the tiny vibrations of a single Si atom. This technology has led to many amazing discoveries. For example, in 2016, they used it to study biological materials without damaging them. In 2019, they could even tell the difference between atoms that were almost identical!
In 2024, Nion Co. joined a company called Bruker. Ondrej now works as a Senior Scientific Advisor there.
Awards and Recognition
Ondrej L. Krivanek has received many awards for his groundbreaking work:
- Honorary Doctorate, University of Leeds, England (2023)
- Honorary Doctorate, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia (2022)
- CSMS Award for Merit in Microscopy (2021)
- Kavli Prize for Nanoscience (2020)
- Fellow of Microbeam Analysis Society of America (2018)
- Special issue of Ultramicroscopy honoring his scientific career (2017)
- Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge UK (2016)
- Cosslett Medal, International Federation of Microscopy Societies (2014)
- Duncumb Award, Microbeam Analysis Society (2014)
- Honorary Fellow of Royal Microscopical Society (2014)
- Fellow of American Physical Society (2013)
- Election to Royal Society Fellowship (2010)
- Distinguished Scientist Award of the Microscopy Society of America (2008)
- Duddell Medal and Prize of the British Institute of Physics
- Seto prize of the Japanese Microscopy Society (1999)
- 2nd place at the 2nd International Physics Olympiad (in Budapest in 1968, representing Czechoslovakia)
