Introduction

I remember Tuesday, February 25, 1964 as the day Andrew Huxley's boyhood hobby and long-standing interest in microscopy captivated my interest and thereafter strongly influenced my activities for the following 25 years. On that day, while I was still a graduate student, Andrew Huxley delivered the first of several lectures in the Jessup Lectureships at Columbia University. His topics included (1) “The Microscope Image of Striated Muscle”, (2) “Changes in the Striation Pattern during Contraction”, (3) “Past and Present Opinions on the Structure of the Muscle Fibre”, (4) “The Length-Tension Diagram of Striated Muscle”, (5) “The Inward Spread of Activation of Contraction”, and (6) “The Steps Between Electrical Activity and Contraction”. A leap of three and a half years brings us to August 29,1967, the day I began postdoctoral training in Andrew Huxley's laboratory at University College; on that date, he lent me his copy of Barer's “Lecture Notes on the Use of the Microscope”. In retrospect, these notes probably fixed an agenda that had first been proposed to me during those three weeks in 1964.

Compelling arguments for studying the contraction of fresh muscle fibres under the microscope had been made before and have been made since those lectures in 1964 (e.g., A. F. Huxley, 1977). However, light microscopy has found applications in many new areas of biological research in the past decade (Allen, 1986).