Joseph Jackson Lister

Joseph Jackson Lister ( born January 11, 1786 in London, † October 24, 1869 in Upton ( Essex ) ) was a British optician and physicist and father of the surgeon Joseph Lister.

Lister was the son of a London wine merchant and Quaker. He worked in his father's business and became a partner at age 18. In 1818 he married Isabella Harris, the daughter of a school principal and a teacher herself. They lived in 1825 in Upton, near London. The marriage produced three daughters and four sons were born.

Lister has always been interested in natural history and improved optical microscopes by minimizing spherical and chromatic aberration. He developed the first achromatic lenses for the microscope. The thesis was carried out in addition to his main duties as a wine merchant and his improved microscope in two years so far that he could give it 1826 for an instrument maker in order. He also published together in 1830 at the Royal Society ( On the improvement of achromatic compound microscopes, Phil Transactions Royal Society ) and worked with the microscope farmers James Smith and Andrew Ross ( 1798-1859 ).

He also made himself observations with the microscope, which he discussed with scientist friends such as George Biddell Airy, John Herschel and Thomas Hodgkin ( discoverer of Hodgkin 's disease), among other things, about the shape of red blood cells ( he also published with Hodgkin 1827 Philosophical Magazine). In 1832 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Another treatise of 1843 on the resolving power of the microscope and telescope was only published after his death by his son (Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society 1913).