Frits Zernike

Frederik Zernike, known as Frits Zernike, was a Dutch physicist who worked as a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Groningen. He invented the phase-contrast microscope, a technique that made transparent, unstained specimens visible under a microscope by exploiting small differences in the phase of light passing through them. He received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physics for his demonstration of the phase contrast method, especially his invention of the phase contrast microscope. Zernike also developed the orthogonal circle polynomials used to describe optical aberrations.