Richard Adolf Zsigmondy

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy was born 1 April 1865, Austrian by birth but Hungarian by name. His research centered on colloids — those strange suspensions of particles neither dissolved nor settled — a realm where chemistry blurred into physics and nothing behaved as expected. To study what couldn't be seen, he co-invented the slit-ultramicroscope, an instrument that used scattered light to reveal particles beyond the reach of ordinary optics. The work opened a field. In 1925 the Nobel committee in Chemistry gave him the prize for it. He also developed membrane filters that became standard tools. Z…