The Journal of Microscopy is the oldest journal dedicated to the science of microscopy and the only peer-reviewed publication of the Royal Microscopical Society. It publishes papers that report on the very latest developments in microscopy such as advances in microscopy techniques or novel areas of application. We will also consider research papers in which the application of state-of-the-art microscopy is a key aspect of the research findings.

The scope covers research in the physical and biological sciences and covers imaging methods using light, electrons, X-rays and other radiations as well as atomic force and near field techniques. Interdisciplinary research is welcome. Papers pertaining to microscopy are also welcomed on optical theory, spectroscopy, novel specimen preparation and manipulation methods and image recording, processing and analysis including dynamic analysis of living specimens.

General Editor
 
Prof. Michelle Peckham
School of Molecular and Cellular Biology
University of Leeds, UK
Michelle Peckham obtained her degree in Biology from the University of York in 1981 and her PhD from University College London in 1984. She then spent 2 years at KCL Biophysics working on muscle birefringence, followed by a year at the University of San Francisco, working on fluorescence polarisation microscopy, and then 2 years at the University of York, working on insect flight muscle contraction. She became a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the department of Biophysics at KCL in 1990, when she set up her own group working on muscle and cytoskeleton, and as part of that work, she began using confocal microscopy. She moved to the University of Leeds in 1997, and became Professor of Cell Biology in 2010. She uses a number of different imaging techniques in her work, from confocal, deconvolution and super-resolution imaging, to transmission and scanning electron microscopy, as well as cryo-electron microscopy. She was president of the Royal Microscopical Society from 2016 – 2019.
 
Scientific Editors
 
Dr Kurt Anderson
Department of Light Microscopy and Image Analysis
The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK
Kurt I. Anderson is a cell biologist with a long-standing interest light microscopy. Following his doctoral work on actin dynamics in cell migration with Vic Small at the Institute for Molecular Biology in Salzburg, he completed a short post-doc with Rob Cross at the Marie Curie Cancer Research Institute (Oxted) examining the adhesion dynamics of fish keratocytes. Dr. Anderson then moved to the newly formed Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, where he set up the light microscopy facility. In Dresden he continued to work on actin dynamics, and demonstrated in 2005 that the leading edge is a lipid diffusion barrier. The same year he was recruited to the Beatson Institute in Glasgow, where his lab pioneered the use of advanced fluorescence imaging techniques such as FRAP and FLIM-FRET to study the molecular dynamics of disease and response to therapy in pre-clinical cancer models. In 2012 he was the first recipient of the Royal Microscopical Society Life Sciences Medal for outstanding achievements applying microscopy in the field of cell biology. In early 2016 he moved to the Francis Crick Institute, where he leads the Crick Advanced Light Microscopy Facility (CALM).
 
 
Dr Bert Hecht
Department of Experimental Physics
University of Würzburg, Germany
Bert Hecht studied Physics at the University of Konstanz. He then joined the group of D. Pohl at IBM Research Lab in Rüschlikon for PhD studies in scanning near-field optical microscopy in collaboration with the University of Basel followed by a Postdoctoral stay in U. Wild's single-molecule spectroscopy group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. After having been awarded a Junior Research Professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation to work on nanoscopic interactions of single molecules at the University of Basel, he joined the University of Würzburg as an associate professor in 2006. Since 2015 he holds a chair for Experimental Physics. Bert Hecht is interested in Nano-Optics to gain fundamental control over light-matter interaction down to the level of single emitters and single photons. His main achievements include the first experimental demonstration of optical antennas (2005 together with D. Pohl) as well as the demonstration of electrically connected optical antennas (2015) and strong coupling of a single quantum dot to a plasmonic nanoresonator at room temperature (2018).
 
 
Prof. Carolyn Larabell
School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Carolyn Larabell is Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Anatomy at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, with a joint appointment as Advanced Light Source Professor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is also the Founding Director of the National Center for X-ray Tomography (NCXT), an NIGMS-NIH and DOE-BER supported Biomedical Technology Research Resource.  She trained as a Cell Biologist and has a long history of developing and implementing new technologies for imaging cells.  With a background in light and electron microscopy, she recognized the need for a mesoscale imaging technology to fill the information gap between these two technologies. Therefore, she began investigating the use of ‘soft’ x-rays to image subcellular structures in whole, hydrated cells at a resolution of about 35 nm. To determine the position of molecules with respect to cell structures, she developed cryo fluorescence tomography using a confocal microscope equipped with a cryogenic immersion lens (US Patent #7852554) and more recently a cryo structured illumination microscope (cryoSIM). Using correlated fluorescence and x-ray tomography of the exact same cell, we can determine the position of specific molecules with respect to intact cellular structures. These technologies have broad biological applications, imaging from small prokaryotic organisms to single mammalian cells obtained from tissue.
 
 
Dr Richard Leapman
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, USA
Richard Leapman received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Cambridge and did his postdoctoral training at Oxford and Cornell Universities, where he contributed to the development of electron spectroscopy for the nanoscale characterization of materials.  Richard subsequently moved to National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, to develop methods based on scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron spectroscopy to determine the structure and chemical composition of cells and supramolecular assemblies.  More recently, his group has developed techniques based on STEM tomography for determining 3D ultrastructure of cells, as well as serial block face SEM approaches for determining nanoscale tissue architecture.  Currently, Richard serves as the Scientific Director of the intramural program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the NIH.  In 2018, he received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Microscopy Society of America.
 
 
Prof. Gail McConnell
Department of Physics
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Professor Gail McConnell is Chair of Biophotonics at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Strathclyde.  Following a first degree in Laser Physics and Optoelectronics (1998) and PhD in Physics from the University of Strathclyde (2002), she obtained a Personal Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2003) and a Research Councils UK Academic Fellowship (2005), securing a readership in 2008. Since 2004, Gail has received over £9M of research funding from a range of sources including EPSRC, MRC, BBSRC, EU and industry. The work in Gail’s group involves the design, development and application of linear and nonlinear optical instrumentation for biomedical imaging, from the nanoscale to the whole organism. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.
 
 
Prof. Pete Nellist
Department of Materials
University of Oxford, UK
Pete Nellist is a Professor in the Department of Materials, and a Tutorial Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He leads a research group that focuses on the applications and development of high-resolution electron microscope techniques, in particular scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), including atomic resolution Z-contrast imaging, ptychography, electron energy-loss and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and applications of spherical aberration correctors. Pete gained his PhD from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Since then he has worked in academia and in the commercial world in the UK, USA and Republic of Ireland. In 2007 he was awarded the Burton Medal by the Microscopy Society of America for exceptional contributions to microscopy, and in 2013 the Ernst Ruska Prize of the German Microscopy Society.  He is a former President of the Royal Microscopical Society he is currently a Board Member of the European Microscopy Society.
 
 
Dr Ulla Neumann
Central Microscopy (CeMic)
Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Köln, Germany
Ulla Neumann is interested in all aspects of botany but has always been fascinated by the complexity and beauty of plant cells as revealed by any microscopy technique. Since 2008, Ulla is the transmission electron microscopy expert in the Central Microscopy facility of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, with a strong expertise in sample preparation techniques including high pressure freezing and freeze-substitution. As TEM expert, she adds an ultrastructural, cell biological angle to many research projects of our Institute with topics as varied as seed coat development, morphogenesis of different leaf shapes, plant-pathogen interactions, or stamen maturation in barley. As part of a microscopy service group, she is also connected to the wide array of other state-of-the-art microscopy techniques used in the field of plant research. In recent years, Ulla has been particularly interested in 3D EM techniques and correlative light and electron microscopy approaches in the field of plant microscopy.
 
 
Prof. Jens Randel Nyengaard
Department of Clinical Medicine
Aarhus University, Denmark
Professor Jens Nyengaard was educated as a medical Doctor at Aarhus University, Denmark, in 1989 followed by 4 years of clinical medical training at different clinical departments. He started stereological quantifications of rodent and human kidneys following normal and pathological development as a medical student and research fellow before completing a postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis, USA in 1992-93. The aim of his professorship starting in 2008 at Core Center for Molecular Morphology, Dept. of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University has been to maintain and further develop its highly esteemed international position in quantitative bioimaging and at the same time, more efficiently embed molecular microscopy in its field of neuroresearch/biomedicine/clinical research. They have introduced and implemented design-unbiased sampling techniques in molecular microscopy. They use histological, immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization, anterograde and retrograde tract tracing and tissue clearing techniques in combination with quantitative (stereology) methods. Different microscopical platforms include light microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, (2-photon) confocal laser scanning microscopy including FRET, FLIM, FRAP, FLIP and FCS, focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy, serial block-face scanning electron microscopy and immuno-transmission electron microscopy etc.
 
 
Prof. Mark Rainforth
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
The University of Sheffield, UK
Mark Rainforth (Professor FREng, University of Sheffield) took the top first class BMet degrees from the Department of Metallurgy in Sheffield in 1984. Prof Rainforth continued his career in Industry before taking a PhD in the School of Materials in Leeds in 1990, after which he moved as an academic to the Department of Materials in Sheffield.  Winner of the IOM3 Rosenhain Medal and past President, Royal Microscopical Society, he is recognised for his work on the characterisation of a wide range of advanced materials and surfaces. He has published 306 refereed scientific papers and is co-author of the book ‘Ceramic Microstructures’.
 
Executive Editor
Lucy Ridler
Journal of Microscopy,
Royal Microscopical Society,
37-38 St Clements,
Oxford, OX4 1AJ, UK
journal@rms.org.uk
 
Journal Editorial Office Manager
Jill Hobbs
Journal of Microscopy,
Royal Microscopical Society,
37-38 St Clements,
Oxford, OX4 1AJ, UK
journaladmin@rms.org.uk
 
Editorial Board
Simon Ameer-Beg, UK
Wolfgang Baumeister, Germany
Filip Braet, Australia
G. J. Brakenhoff, The Netherlands
Nigel Browning, UK
C. Barry Carter, USA
Luis M. Cruz-Orive, Spain
Alberto Diaspro, Italy
Vinayak Dravid, USA
Thierry Epicier, France
Stefan Hell, Germany
C. Vyvyan Howard, UK
Bruno Humbel, Japan
Dominique Jeulin, France
Theo Lasser, Switzerland
Jian Liu, China
Dale Newbury, USA
George Patterson, USA          
Stephen Pennycook, Singapore
Zhifeng Shao, USA  
James Smith, UK
Theresa Ward, UK
Alice Warley, UK
Clare Waterman, USA
Stefanie Weidtkamp-Peters, Germany
Tony Wilson, UK
Daniel Zicha, Czech Republic