Edward Hutchinson Synge
Edward Hutchinson Synge (1 June 1890 – 26 May 1957) was an Irish physicist who published a complete theoretical description of the near-field scanning optical microscope, an instrument used in nanotechnology, several decades before it was experimentally developed. He never completed university yet did significant original research in both microscopy and telescopy.[1] He was the first to apply the principle of scanning in imaging, which later became important in a wide range of technologies including television, radar, and scanning electron microscopy.[2][3] He was the older brother of distinguished mathematician and theoretical physicist John Lighton Synge.[1]
Early life and education
E. H. Synge was the son of Edward Synge and Ellen Frances Price. He was familiarly known as "Hutchie".[4] He was the nephew of playwright John Millington Synge and the brother of John Lighton Synge who edited the collected works of Sir William Rowan Hamilton at Hutchie's urging.[5] He and brother John were great-great-great-grandsons of Irish bishop Hugh Hamilton.[6] He is also the uncle of the mathematician Cathleen Synge Morawetz.[7] Throughout his life Synge was very physically active, pursuing walking, cycling, swimming and sailing. In his later life he took up painting and was good at it.[6]
In 1908 he entered Trinity College Dublin to study Mathematics and old Irish. For three years he was a brilliant student and won several prizes and a Foundation Scholarship in mathematics in 1910. Then at the end of his third year he came into an inheritance from his uncle John Millington Synge and dropped out of university.[1] For a decade and a half he lived a reclusive life and continued his studies in isolation.[7][6]
Career
Starting in 1928, with encouragement from Albert Einstein,[8] Hutchie launched on a period of intense productivity during which he laid the foundation for new kinds of microscopes and telescopes. Nobody, including his famous brother John appreciated Hutchie's achievements at the time.[9] His work was overlooked for decades,[10] but is now better known thanks to the book The Life and Works of Edward Hutchinson Synge[5] published by Living Edition in 2012.[11]
On April 22, 1928 Synge wrote to Albert Einstein[8] about an idea he had for a new microscopic imaging method in which an optical field scattered from a tiny gold particle could be used as a radically new light source.[12] Einstein replied that although Synge’s method appeared essentially unworkable,[13] the basic ideas seemed correct and he should publish his research.[3]
There followed a remarkable period from 1928 to 1932 in which Synge produced all of his key works[4] which he published in the Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science.[14][15][16] Remarkably, he did all of this work alone, without a laboratory, and while living at his home in Dundrum in the suburbs of Dublin.[7] By 1932 he had laid out the theory of the near-field microscope and his description was incredibly accurate.[17]
The idea was ahead of its time.[18] In 1956 a similar theory was developed by John A. O'Keefe[19] and in 1972 Ash and Nicholls gave the first experimental demonstration of the technique using electromagnetic radiation.[20][2] It was not until Synge's original papers reemerged in the 1980s that his priority was finally recognized.[21]
Synge also invented a new kind of telescope.[22][23]
Later life
All work stopped in 1932 and he produced no other important work during his lifetime. In 1936 he had a mental breakdown and was committed to a Dublin nursing home where he remained until his death in 1957.[2]
Publications
- A suggested method for extending microscopic resolution into the ultra-microscopic region The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1928, Series 7, Volume 6, Issue 35, pp. 356–362
- A design for a very large telescope The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1930, Series 7, Volume 10, Issue 63, pp. 353–360
- A microscopic method The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1931, Series 7, Volume 11, Issue 68, pp. 65–80
- An application of piezo-electricity to microscopy The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 1932, Series 7, Volume 13, Issue 83, pp. 297–300
References
- 1 2 3 Dublin Graduate Physics Programme (2012)
- 1 2 3 Novotny (2007)
- 1 2 Novotny (2011)
- 1 2 Trinity (March 2012)
- 1 2 Donegan (2012)
- 1 2 3 Florides (2008)
- 1 2 3 Trinity (April 2012)
- 1 2 Hebrew (2014)
- ↑ Trinity (March 2012): Years later John Synge wrote, “In the course of a varied academic career, I never had a colleague as interesting intellectually as Hutchie, for his mind ranged widely over art, literature, history, philosophy and science.”
- ↑ Trinity (March 2012): Hutchie's achievements … have only recently been accorded their proper place in Physics.
- ↑ Living Edition Publishers
- ↑ Novotny_2011: The gold particle, Synge argued, would act as a local probe of some sample of interest, with the scattered light transmitted through the sample and into a detector. The sample’s image could then, at least in principle, be obtained by raster scanning the particle over the sample surface while continuously recording the detected light’s intensity.
- ↑ In German: prinzipiell unbrauchbar
- ↑ Synge (1928)
- ↑ Synge (1931)
- ↑ Synge (1932)
- ↑ Donegan (2007): "Indeed as far as I can tell, many of the ideas patented by IBM, AT&T and others were completely described by Synge 50 years before the patents were issued. It could not have been luck, since his descriptions are quantitatively accurate and exhibit a knowledge of the technologies necessary to implement his correct notions of how a near-field instrument might work.” (From a letter written in 1994 by Michael Paesler of North Carolina State University to Dennis McMullan, author of a review of the prehistory of scanning microscopy published in 1990.)
- ↑ Novotny (2007): Over the years, Synge’s ideas were reinvented several times and his papers resurfaced only in the mid 1980s.
- ↑ Rubincam (2000): Applying the probe idea to microscopy led him to independently rediscover the principle of the near-field optical microscope first described by E. H. Synge in the 1920s.
- ↑ Super-resolution Aperture Scanning Microscope E. A. Ash & G. Nicholls, University College, London, Nature 237, 510 – 512 (30 June 1972); doi:10.1038/237510a0
- ↑ O'Keefe, J.A. (1956). "Letters to the Editor". J. Opt. Soc. Am. 46: 359. Bibcode:1956JOSA...46..359.
- ↑ Novotny (2007): Two of his papers, one on the design of a multiple-mirror telescope in 1930, and the other on the design of a microscope that can measure lengths less than the wavelength of light in 1928, both published in Philosophical Magazine, ensured Hutchie’s place in the history of science.
- ↑ Dublin Graduate Physics Programme (2012): His visionary insights into future technology lie in what we now call nanoscience.
Sources
- Hebrew University (2014). Einstein Archives Online: E.H. Synge correspondence The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in cooperation with the Princeton University Press, launched on December 5, 2014
- Trinity College Dublin (April 2012). From peering at atoms to gazing at the stars Trinity College Dublin, 19 April 2012
- Trinity College Dublin (March 2012). Hutchinson Synge – A Nanoscience Visionary Trinity College Dublin, March 30, 2012
- Donegan, J.F. (2012). The Life and Works of Edward Hutchinson Synge (co-edited with D. Weaire and P. Florides), Pöllauberg, Austria : Living Edition, ISBN 3901585176
- Novotny, Lukas (2011). From near-field optics to optical antennas by Lukas Novotny, Physics Today, July 2011, pp. 47–52
- Dublin Graduate Physics Programme (2012). Edward Hutchinson Synge Symposium October 3, 2012
- Florides, Petros S. (2008). John Lighton Synge Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin, doi:10.1098/rsbm.2007.0040
- Novotny, Lukas (2007). The History of Near-field Optics Adapted from Novotny, ”The History of Near-field Optics,” Progress in Optics 50, E. Wolf (ed.), chapter 5, p. 137- 184 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
- Rubincam, David P.; Lowman, Paul D. (2000). John Aloysius O'Keefe (1916–2000) American Astronomical Society
- Synge, E.H. (1932). "An application of piezoelectricity to microscopy". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 13 (83): 297–300. doi:10.1080/14786443209461931.
- Synge, E.H. (1931). "A microscopic method". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 11 (68): 65–80. doi:10.1080/14786443109461663.
- Synge, E.H. (1928). "A suggsted method for extending the microscopic resolution into the ultramicroscopic region". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 6 (35): 356–362. doi:10.1080/14786440808564615.
External links
- Hutchie Synge and near field optics Lukas Novotny, University of Rochester video series
- McMullan D: The prehistory of scanned image microscopy Part 1: scanned optical microscopes. Proc Roy Microsc Soc 25, 127–131 (1990)
- The grave of Edward Hutchenson Synge at Saint John’s Church in Limerick, Ireland