What Equipment Was Necessary for Discovery of the Ribosome?
Prior to the development and use of the electron microscope and differential centrifugation, there were practical limits to how far the components of cell structure could be effectively studied through the use of the light microscope. However their discovery and refinement enabled scientists to peek much closer at the smallest fundamental unit of life itself, the cell, and to make some startling and amazing discoveries. Without these advances we might never have acquired knowledge of the ribosome, that little protein-manufacturing production line of the cell. The Romanian-born American cell biologist George Palade was introduced to the potential of electron microscopy by the Belgian Albert Claude. (Claude himself was a Nobel prize winner, awarded jointly to himself, Palade and Christian de Duve, and has been credited with the discovery of the endoplasmic reticulum). Claude was the person who invited Palade to work at the Rockefeller Institute in New York in 1946.
