Status & Perspectives in Science & Education

111 110 Principal Scientist Profiles Timo Mappes Timo Mappes Principal Scientist Profiles PROFESSOR FOR HISTORY OF PHYSICS WITH FOCUS IN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION Prof. Mappes is the founding director of Deutsches Optisches Museum (D.O.M.). In 2018 he joined Friedrich Schiller University after having run global R&D for the spectacle lens business of ZEISS. There, in addition to numerous technical innovations, he introduced edutainment as a compelling format of science communication at the point of sales. In parallel to latest technology, Prof. Mappes’ private passion for more than 25 years are antique optical instruments. This passion is now his profession - in Jena he is creating a new type of museum by merging science center elements with historic artefacts of optics, combining it with the showcase of the latest research results in optics and photonics. TIMO MAPPES RESEARCH AREAS Experimental revisiting historic milestones in optics and photonics • Performance of immersion microscopy with high numerical aperture pre 1900 • High-resolution widefield microscopy at 275 nm and the discovery of microscopic fluorescence in 1903 • Beginning of light-sheet microscopy in 1904 Physical characterization of vintage optical solutions • Performance of historical objectives, applying correlative microscopy to evaluate the intra- and extrapolation of historic microscopic drawings • Lens-mapping of spectacle lenses made prior to 1800 • Tolerances and stability in production of optical glass Edutainment as science communication • Developing educational kits for optics & photonics TEACHING FIELDS In the course “Milestones in Optics” Prof. Mappes is reflecting on the physics of optical systems and instruments, as well as their application, economics and relevance. He also shares his industrial background in workshops on science communication. RESEARCH METHODS Research at D.O.M. is developed from scratch with focus on its research areas. The museum’s collection is a unique source of entire systems or optical glass: • World’s largest collection of optical glass with about 95,000 samples • Huge collection of spectacle lenses dating back to the 1600s, among them the largest collection of Nuremberg master spectacles • Major collection of antique microscopes starting in the late 1600s, as well as a large collection of historical microscope objectives • Scientific equipment to analyze these systems RECENT RESEARCH RESULTS There are several fields D.O.M. team members are or have been working on recently: (1) Evaluation of historic or current optical solutions • Experimental characterization of UV-protection with clear ophthalmic lenses [1] • UV-microscopy at λ = 275 nm with quartz-optics of 1903. Experimentally we proved the limitations of the historic results being the contrast of photographic plates. Modern CCD, applied with the historic optics, convey details of the test objects at the respective widefield resolution limit in this UV-C regime of d = 145 nm. (2) Edutainment Developing didactic workflows to enable laymen to prove optical performance. For industrial applications a sales process was designed, along with the matching robust optical test system to compare optical parameters beyond the visible spectrum [2]. (3) Overcoming classical limits in the performance of optical systems Transforming the challenges of classical optical limits to a none-optical regime and re-transforming the solutions to address basic technical limitations [3, 4]. REVISITING HISTORICAL MICROSCOPY RESEARCH Research at D.O.M. aims at revisiting major findings in optics and photonics. As such the team is probing historic speculations with recent methods. One example in this very direction was the validation of the theory on the shape and behavior of metallic nanoparticles in solution by Siedentopf and Zsigmondy in 1902 [5]. Color imaging back then was not available yet. Thus, Zsigmondy could describe the colors of the Tyndall cones of the moving nanoparticles in written text only. In addition, he could only speculate about the distinct shape of the nanoparticles, because they were too small to be resolved by any means during his lifetime. Consequently, the historic optical equipment (a) was applied and Zsigmondy’s findings were evaluated. The photonic response of the particles could be documented (first row on the right, micrographs b through d) and correlated this with the shape of the particles by using TEM images (second row on the right). Eventually single-particle spectra (bottom graph on the right) could be evaluated. Eventually Zsigmondy’s approach to develop models beyond accessible physical regimes could be experimentally proved having been successful [6]. [1] Rifai et al., Biomedical Optics Express 9, 1948 (2018). [2] Lappe et al., US Patent US10782540.B2 (Granted 2020). [3] Mappes et al., US Patent US9939660.B2 (granted 2018). [4] Mappes et al., European Patent EP3312661.B1 (granted 2020). [5] Siedentopf et al., Annalen der Physik 315, 1 (1902). [6] Mappes et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 51, 11208 (2012). Contact: Phone: + 49 160 91142337 Email: timo.mappes@uni-jena.de

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