Prof. Dr. Frits Zernike or how the Nazis did something good by mistake

Frits Zernike 

Although he spent his whole life from birth to retirement in the cities of Amsterdam and then Groningen, his life was far from ordinary. Incredibly intelligent and gifted, having the rare combination of simultaneously being a fine theoretician and skilled experimentalist, Frits Zernike started his scientific journey in astronomy and then applied his findings in microscopy. Before his discovery was recognised and awarded a Nobel prize, the Nazis were the first to see the potential in Zernike’s achievement and popularized it, altough it was made public for more than a decade. This is the story of the man that made it possible to see what couldn’t be seen ever before.

Transcript

Intro: Although he spent his whole life from birth to retirement in the cities of Amsterdam and then Groningen, his life was far from ordinary. Incredibly intelligent and gifted, having the rare combination of simultaneously being a fine theoretician and skilled experimentalist, Frits Zernike started his scientific journey in astronomy and then applied his findings in microscopy. Before his discovery was recognised and awarded a Nobel prize, the Nazis were the first to see the potential in Zernike’s achievement. This is the story of the man that made it possible to see what couldn’t be seen ever before.

Main: Born on July 16th 1888, Frits Zernike was the third child out of 6 in a highly educated family. Both parents were math teachers, while three of his sisters distinguished themselves in particular. One was one of the most prominent poets in the country, Elisabeth Zernike. Another, Anna Zernike became the first woman ordained in the Dutch Mennonite church, while the third died 8 days before turning a hundred years old. Speaking of, 4 out of the six siblings died in March, including Frits, which I guess in practical sense made death anniversaries quite convenient. 

He didn’t just take after his parents, he was so dedicated he bought tubes, pots and all sorts of other materials from his own pocket money or through gifts to explore his ideas. And I would like to point out how important that is to explore your interest, to be curious and test your ideas. I find that many times this innate curiosity that most of us possess is stripped away in school or while we were growing up. What is something you were always wondering and never got to test it out? And no, letting a radioactive spider bite will not turn you into Spiderman, tried that and it failed, you are free to try something else.

In his scientific adventures when it came time to go to university in 1905 Frits chose to major in chemistry and minor in physics and maths. In 1908 he was a chemistry student in Amsterdam who won a competition held by the University of Groningen with an article on probability theory based on a party game called the 'Bell and Hammer game'. The university published Zernike's article, which was written in French and spanned 34 densely written pages. In it, he described the game's components, including cards, dice, and counters, and explained the various chances of winning through extensive calculations and mathematical transformations. Zernike received his prize, a medal, from the university's Senate on August 16th, 1908, during the opening of the academic year 1908-1909. His research won him a gold medal  from the Dutch Society of Science in 1912. A year later on a faithful day he met Jacobus Kapteyn, who was not a real capt’n, a bit of a false advertisement, but something related to that, he was an astronomer. Little fun fact, Jacobus was one in 14 children. More remarkable about him is the fact that he was the first one to show that stars move in two opposite streams, which later served as proof that the Milky Way is perpetually rotating and moving through space. He supervised the cataloguing of more than 450,000 southern stars and applied statistic on the to determine the architecture of that part of the Galaxy. The amount of work and dedication is honestly astonishing to think about, especially in those times with no computers. Zernike got a chance to do his dissertation under him. 

 While he had some valuable discoveries during that time like a new galvanometer, integral equation theory of equilibrium fluids, etc., the invention he is most known for is the phase-contrast technique in microscopy. Initially, he encountered an issue while using the telescope, but later recognised the fact that in microscopy at that had the same issue and very elegantly solved it with the phase contrast technique. Telescopes and microscopes employ mirrors which at that time sometimes produced "ghost" images and Zernike hypothesized that they were caused by out-of-phase wavelengths. If he could somehow bring direct and diffracted images back into phase, perhaps these aberrations would disappear But what is this phase-contrast technique actually? Science time!

Phase contrast is a technique used in microscopy to enhance the contrast of transparent specimens. Normally, transparent specimens are difficult to see under a microscope because they do not absorb or scatter light strongly enough to create a visible contrast.

The phase of light refers to the position of the light wave at a particular point in time. Specifically, it refers to the relationship between the peaks and troughs of the light wave, and how they align with respect to a reference point.

In a simple wave, the phase is determined by the position of the wave relative to its maximum amplitude or highest peak. When two waves are combined, their phases can add up or cancel each other out, depending on their alignment.

In the context of phase contrast microscopy, the phase of light passing through a transparent specimen is altered by a special phase plate, causing a shift in the alignment of the light waves passing through different parts of the specimen. This shift in phase creates a visible contrast in the resulting image, making it possible to observe the otherwise transparent specimen.

The phase plate produces two beams of light, one that passes through the specimen and another that bypasses it. When these two beams are recombined, they interfere with each other and create a distinctive pattern of bright and dark areas that correspond to the different phases of the light passing through the specimen. This creates a high-contrast image of the transparent specimen, making it much easier to see and study. And the best thing about it was the fact the specimens could be kept alive and studied, because more in depth analysis meant killing and then staining them. They could finally observe living cells and microorganisms at a detail never before encountered. 

Sounds really cool, right? Not so much for the community at that time which met the invention with crickets.   Although Zernike discovered it in 1930, he will receive the Nobel prize for it only in 1953. He actively made efforts to popularise his invention and tried to bring its benefits to the attention of the scientific community. He even went to the Zeiss company, which is one of the oldest and a still leading company in optical instruments. But their reaction to Zernike was unexpectedly cold. So cold in fact, that Zernike felt the need to mention it in his Nobel prize speech. 

“With the phase-contrast method still in the first somewhat primitive stage, I went in 1932 to the Zeiss Works in Jena to demonstrate. It was not received with such enthusiasm as I had expected. Worst of all was one of the oldest scientific associates, who said: « If this had any practical value, we would ourselves have invented it long ago ». Long ago, indeed! The great achievements of the firm in practical and theoretical microscopy were all due to their famous leader Ernst Abbe and dated from before 1890, the year in which Abbe became sole proprietor of the Zeiss Works. From then on he had been absorbed in administrative and social problems, partly also in other fields of optics. Indeed his last work on microscopy dates from that same year. In it he gave a simple reason for certain difficulties with transparent objects, but this was of no account. His increasing staff of scientific collaborators evidently under the impression of his inspiring personality, formed the tradition that everything worth knowing or trying in microscopy had been achieved already. For more than twenty-five years after Abbe’s death in 1906, his great authority thus barred the way to further progress. Here is one more remarkable historic point. Whereas all the other achievements of Abbe’s were greatly appreciated by all practical microscope users, his theory of image formation was firmly rejected by most of them. To the physicist this may seem incredible, especially when he remembers Abbe’s experiments which in his opinion confirm the theory in a convincing way. The opposing microscopists, however, said these experiments only showed how the microscope may be used, or rather misused, by the physicist for interference experiments which have nothing to do with the ordinary proper use of the instrument. A long story could be told about the violent controversies of this kind which occurred time and again through half a century. We can say now that Abbe and his followers were as much to blame as the other party. For one thing, their theory was too abstract, it only applied to the oversimplified cases of a point source of light and an object of regular structure. However, it could very well have been extended to meet the practical cases. But then it was also incomplete, it did not explain the peculiarities in the imaging of transparent objects, and what is worse, its defenders never recognized this incompleteness. Small wonder therefore that the microscopist rejected the theory as useless in practice.”

We have to appreciate the subtlety with which Zernike roasted the people at Zeiss, I would probably be just as petty in my Nobel prize speech. He basically told them, pardon my French, that they couldn’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground and eloquently justified his stance.  Ironically, the Nazis, or more specifically the Wehrmacht, had less of an ego and recognised the phase-contrast as for what it was, revolutionary. Although it is not documented if it was actually used for their agenda, they did seize the technical details in an attempt to gain an advantage in the war and started the mass production. Regardless, after WWII ended the new microscopes kept being massed produced by Zeiss and other companies. Zernike said about this: “Zeiss in Jena, who had started with so little enthusiasm, slowly continued with the method. After some more of my visits, after some years of developing too complicated instruments and after further delay by the War, they brought out phase-contrast objectives and accessories in 1941”. I guess one only realises what they had after a bunch of genocidal nationalists took it from them. I wouldn’t recommend using this tactic to gain recognition though, but what do I know? 

Side note, time for the question of the episode: what other technological advancements were seized by the Nazis? And yes, there were a lot of them, but some were quite surprising.

Back to Zernike. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much about him as a person. When looking for his obituary I stumbled across his son’s obituary, only because he had the exact same name and was also a physicist. I do harbour a suspicion that Zernike the father was actually able to clone himself, but at this moment is only a speculation. Frits Jr. was also prominent in his field and had a son called the same, but at least they had the decency to mention in his name the fact that he was the third Frits Zernike in line. Maybe they did this because the grandson owns an ice cream company in the US and wanted to make sure people knew that he is not part of the original clone. The plot thickens…

Now on a more serious note, I will instead share some really interesting details about him and some small anecdotes. Apparently there is a lunar crater named after him, which is 48 km in diameter. Also, he is the great uncle of another physics Nobel laureate, Gerardus 't Hooft, who won the prize in 1999. 

On the 100th anniversary of Zernike's birth in 1988, his son Frits Jr. and granddaughter had intended to donate his original gold Nobel Prize medal to the University Museum in Groningen. However, when they arrived in the Netherlands from England, the medal was missing from their luggage. The family believed that the medal had been stolen while in transit. To compensate, the museum received a gold-plated replica of the medal featuring Zernike's image. Some years later, after Frits Jr.'s passing in 2011, his family discovered the original medal tucked away in the suitcase lining. Today, it is kept securely in a safe. You know, like the times you forget money in your winter trousers and give yourself a surprise the next year but with a very valuable medal. 

Always the experimentalist, Zernike accordingly to the biography on the Groningen Univerisity’s website was a little menace to his colleagues materials. He often needed resources for his craft projects, and reportedly believed that a paperclip was the most important tool for any experiment. He also had a habit of searching through his colleagues' offices for useful parts. This became a concern for his colleagues, who were warned to lock their offices and not leave Zernike alone in the lab at night. However, a friendly porter who left a small cellar window open allowed Zernike to continue his scavenging. I can imagine his colleagues frantically hiding their office supplies to save them from this mad scientist. 

Zernike's skills came in handy outside of the laboratory as well. On one occasion, he was stuck in a lift in Paris with several others. Upon seeing the manufacturer's data on the lift's typeplate, he was able to recall the necessary technical specifications to fix it. After a few minutes of work, he got the lift running again. Unfortunately, it is not known whether he used a paperclip for this repair.

Despite winning countless awards, having prizes in his name, a Nobel, patents and overall bringing great value to the scientific community and the world in general, Frits Zernike’s grave is unmarked. Which I think was a personal choice made out of his genuine modesty. I guess the conclusion for this episode is to invent something amazing and wait for a totalitarian regime to popularize it, maybe you’ll be lucky. I mean, some play the lottery and win, who knows?  But for the serious conclusion, I think we can all learn a good lesson from Zernike as a scientist and as a person. Obviously, he was a scientific celebrity of his time, but seemed so humble and unassuming. He was a very serious who apparently did take part in the practical jokes that were happening in the Physics Department and just kept his mind in the game. He invented and revolutionised out of his own passion and not only left the world a valuable legacy, he also had successors such as his son who continued the good work and was also regarded as an inspirational man and colleague. We should all be great people that strive to support and encourage other great people. Let’s plant the good seed around us and watch it propagate. But don’t forget that good people can also be petty sometimes, it’s simply good for the soul.

Resources:

https://www.nndb.com/people/777/000099480/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frits-Zernike

https://www.optica.org/en-us/history/biographies/bios/frits-zernike/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/crime-and-law-enforcement-biographies/frits-zernike 

https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/zernike-lecture.pdf

https://home.uni-leipzig.de/pwm/web/?section=introduction&page=phasecontrast

https://www.rug.nl/museum/collections/columns/zernike-5-frits-zernike-alias-mac-guyver?lang=en