Abstract
The study of fluorescence has revolutionized biomedical research. Since it was first described almost two centuries ago, fluorescence has transformed the scientific enterprise by facilitating unprecedented insights into the intricacies of biological systems on small and large scales. This chapter presents an overview of this curious photophysical phenomenon and the ways in which fluorescence can be harnessed to enrich our understanding of chemical and biological systems through spectroscopy and microscopy.
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Notes
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Sir John Frederick William Herschel was a British astronomer, mathematician, chemist, and photographer. It is an interesting reflection for this author that, in 1833, Herschel embarked on a journey to South Africa with his wife to catalog the stars, nebulae, and other objects of the southern skies. During their stay in the Cape, the Herschels also produced over 100 illustrations of Cape flora.
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The title of this chapter is adapted from the title of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World (1932), which itself is a quotation from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. In the same way that Miranda is dazzled by the “many goodly creatures” on her island (Thompson et al. 2001), so too have biologists discovered whole new worlds of structural and functional detail under the fluorescence microscope. This chapter is based on material from my doctoral thesis (Woodland 2016) and is dedicated to the memory of Professor Timothy Egan (1962–2022), my PhD supervisor at the University of Cape Town, who passed away prematurely and who encouraged my first explorations in fluorescence. He is greatly missed by the South African and global scientific communities.
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Woodland, J.G. (2023). Bright New World: Principles of Fluorescence and Applications in Spectroscopy and Microscopy. In: Shapiro, L. (eds) Microscopy Techniques for Biomedical Education and Healthcare Practice . Biomedical Visualization, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36850-9_5
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