Keith Porter was to many the father of biological electron microscopy (EM) and even of cell biology. He helped instigate the founding both of this journal and of the American Society of Cell Biology, and was a key figure in defining the structures of intact and sectioned cells.
The latter stages of Keith Porter's eminent cell biology career began with the installation of a 1-MeV high voltage electron microscope (HVEM) at the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1972. Porter had high hopes that the HVEM would allow him to pursue a long-term goal of defining the structure of the cytoplasm by looking at whole cell mounts. Although success did come in imaging whole cells, in the end, the ambitious goal of defining the definitive structure of the cytoplasm was not matched by the technology of the day...
