This is a nice way to end 2023 – a new publication of an article which was a fairly major piece of work this year. This one is the about the use of metal and metal oxide coating for diatom microscopy, and looks at the slides and techniques of making them from the very earliest examples to the modern day. It has been published in the Quekett Journal of Microscopy. I even managed to get one of my images as the cover art of this edition.

Shown below are some extracts from the article and the cover page.

Please excuse the relatively poor quality of the scans, my home scanner is not the most up to date. The hard copy in the Journal is much better.

It was as pleasure working on this one, as I find the approaches used to improve diatom visibility fascinating. Sourcing the slides was the biggest challenge as these are unusual items, but I wanted to write something to show the wider world some of what these amazing slide makers have produced.

More to come in 2024 as I have a few papers already in the pipeline. As always, thanks for reading, and if you’d like to know more about my work I can be reached here.

All the best for 2024 everyone!!!