Lectures at the Annual Exhibition of Microscopy – 2021

I started microscopy at about 12 years old (1971), when I was given a small microscope. This spurred me on to save up pocket money to buy a £70 Russian Biolam microscope, but the desire to see ever more inside cells got me interested in electron microscopy.

I took a degree in zoology at the University of Manchester where I used both scanning and transmission electron microscopy for my third-year project on ciliated protozoa from the sheep’s rumen which then turned into a PhD.

I changed topics to the inner ear in my first postdoctoral position at Keele University in 1984 in the University’s electron microscope unit, and became a Wellcome Trust funded lecturer. I was taken onto the University academic staff in 1994. Together with my eventual wife (who passed away in 2015), we built up the electron microscope unit and in 1994 I became its Director.

At Keele I also set up a course in Neuroscience in 1996 but continued research; I have published over 70 journal articles, revised a chapter in Gray’s Anatomy and contributed to a number of other textbooks. I studied areas of the brain as well during this time and eventually became a Professor of Cellular Neuroscience in 2013 and Research Director for our department. I retired in February 2021 and I am now an Emeritus Professor at Keele.

The interest in electron microcopy has been so strong it has spilled over into a massive hobby, which I will talk about in my presentation!

Owen Green has worked in the Earth Science Department at the University of Oxford since 1989, and for the past 11 years as Manager of the Geo-facilities laboratories (which includes the Optics Suite). Prior to moving to Oxford he was Curator of Geological Collections at Goldsmith’s College, University of London.

At Oxford he helped establish the Palaeobiology Laboratories and supported the research of staff, including the late Martin Brasier (micropalaeontologist), and is co-author on several papers, most notably the contextual studies on the world’s oldest (3.5 billion years old) putative fossils from the Archaean of Western Australia. Other research interests includes a study of the last shallow marine carbonate-platform dwelling foraminifera of the Tethyan Ocean recorded in rocks from the NW Himalayas 50.5 million years ago as India crashed into Asia; Neoproterozoic agglutinated foraminifera from NW Europe (Avalonia and Baltica); seasonal growth and development of the flightless New Zealand moa; the formation of gas hydrates during the early Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic event; and historical studies of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin (1865–1952) and Oxfordshire’s English map maker William Smith (1769–1839, The Map that changed the World). Developing palaeobiological sample techniques culminated in the publication of A manual of Practical Laboratory and Field Techniques in Palaeobiology (2001).

Owen is currently a member of both the Engineering and Physical Sciences and Outreach Committees of the Royal Microscopical Society, and has been a co-convenor of the RMS supported Geo-materials meeting (September 2014) at Oxford. He also organised outreach events on volcanoes and mountain building as well as being a member of the Learning Zone team at the bi-annual RMS Microscience Microscopy Conference (mmc), and is an occasional contributor to the Society’s newsletter Infocus. He is currently Chair of the Oxfordshire Geology Trust, the geo-conservation charity promoting geology to the public and undertaking outreach events in libraries and schools and has served as a committee member for the Geological Curators Group.

Himalayan Palaeozoic rocks from the area surrounding Mount Qomolangma (Mt. Everest) have been dated at 470-million-years-old (early to middle Ordovician) and contain a diverse assemblage of fossils preserved in shallow marine carbonate rich (peloidal limestone, grainstones and calcareous rich siltstones) sediments. The marine fossil assemblage includes fragments of crinoids (sea lilies), trilobites, brachiopods, ostracods, faecal pellets (peloids) and ‘net-like’ structures of possibly bryozoan affinity. Centimetre sized algal thrombolytic-like structures have also been recognised in hand specimen from the carbonate rocks collected in the Rongbuk Valley area. New samples from Everest have been analysed through the application of LM (transmitted and incident), CL and SEM techniques to examine the diversity of the fossil assemblage and the preservation potential of the dominant taxa in these early Palaeozoic rocks which have been subjected to a complex geological history with temperatures more than 350°C and buried to depths of over 5 km before being elevated to a height of 8,848 m.

Lectures and gossip at the 2021 Annual Exhibition of Microscopy