physics

Ondrej Krivanek

Ondrej Krivanek is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ondrej Krivanek rather than just read about it. In short: Ondrej Ladislav Krivanek (Czech: Ondřej Ladislav Křivánek; born 1 August 1950) is a Czech-British physicist resident in the United States, and a leading developer of electron-optical instrumentation. He won the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience in 2020 for his substantial innovations in atomic resolution electron microscopy.

Key takeaways

Ondrej Krivanek belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ondrej Krivanek to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ondrej Krivanek from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ondrej Ladislav Krivanek (Czech: Ondřej Ladislav Křivánek; born 1 August 1950) is a Czech-British physicist resident in the United States, and a leading developer of electron-optical instrumentation. He won the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience in 2020 for his substantial innovations in atomic resolution electron microscopy.

Early life He was born in Prague, and received his primary and secondary education there. In 1968, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he graduated from University of Leeds and obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from University of Cambridge (Trinity College), and became a British citizen in 1974.

Career His post-doctoral work at Kyoto University, Bell Laboratories and UC Berkeley established him as a leading high resolution electron microscopist, who obtained some of the first atomic resolution images of grain boundaries in semiconductors and of interfaces in semiconductor devices. Starting in the late 1970s, he designed a series of electron energy loss (EEL) spectrometers and imaging filters, first as a post-doc at UC Berkeley, then as an assistant professor at Arizona State University and a consultant to Gatan Inc., and later as director of R&D at Gatan. These became highly successful, with over 500 installations world-wide. He also co-authored, with Channing Ahn, the EELS Atlas, now a standard reference for electron energy loss spectroscopy, pioneered the design and use of slow-scan CCD cameras for electron microscopy, and developed efficient microscope aberration diagnosis and tuning algorithms. He also initiated the development and designed the first user interface of DigitalMicrograph, which went on to become the world's leading electron microscopy image acquisition and processing software. The imaging filters he designed were corrected for second order aberrations and distortions, and he next took up the correction of third order aberrations, a key problem in electron microscopy. Following an unsuccessful application for funding in the US, he applied, successfully, for support to the Royal Society (jointly with L. Michael Brown FRS and Andrew Bleloch). He then took an unpaid leave of absence from Gatan to develop an aberration corrector for a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) in Cambridge UK, together with Niklas Dellby and others. In 1997, this led to the first STEM aberration corrector that succeeded in improving the resolution of the electron microscope it was built into. Also in 1997 and with Niklas Dellby, he started Nion Co., where they produced a new corrector design. In 2000 this corrector became the first commercially delivered electron microscope aberration corrector in the world (to IBM T.J. Watson Research Center), and soon after delivery it produced the first directly interpretable sub-Å resolution images obtained by any type of an electron microscope. Nion correctors delivered to Oak Ridge National Laboratory produced the first directly interpretable sub-Å resolution electron microscope images of a crystal lattice and the first EEL spectra of single atoms in a bulk solid. Nion has since progressed onto designing and manufacturing whole scanning transmission electron microscopes that have produced many further world-leading results, such as atomic-resolution elemental mapping and analytical imaging in which every individual atom is resolved and identified. In 2013, Nion introduced a new design of a monochromator for STEM that allowed the first demonstration of vibrational/phonon spectroscopy in the electron microscope, and can now reach 3 meV energy resolution at 20 kV. Used in tandem with the new Nion energy loss spectrometer, the monochromator has led to many revolutionary results. These include a 2016 demonstration of damage-free vibrational spectroscopy of different hydrogen environments in a biological material (Guanine), 2019 demonstrations of atomic resolution imaging using the phonon signal and of detecting and mapping an amino acid different in just one 12C atom being substituted by 13C (isotopic shift), and a 2020 detection of the vibrational signal from a single Si atom. Nion Co. was acquired by Bruker (BRKR) in 2024. He is currently Senior Scientific Advisor to Bruker and Affiliate Professor at Arizona State University.

Awards International Member, National Academy of Engineering (2025) Honorary Doctorate, University of Leeds (2023) Honorary Doctorate, Masaryk University (2022) CSMS Award for Merit in Microscopy (2021) Kavli Prize for Nanoscience (2020) Fellow of Microbeam Analysis Society of America (2018) Special issue of Ultramicroscopy honoring Ondrej Krivanek's scientific career (2017) Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge UK (2016) Cosslett Medal, International Federation of Microscopy Societies (2014) Duncumb Award, Microbeam Analysis Society (2014) Honorary Fellow of Royal Microscopical Society (2014) Fellow of American Physical Society (2013). election to Royal Society Fellowship (2010). Distinguished Scientist Award of the Microscopy Society of America (2008) Duddell Medal and Prize of the British Institute of Physics (2000) Seto prize of the Japanese Microscopy Society (1999) R&D100 Award (for imaging filter design, with A.J. Gubbens and N. Dellby, 1993) 1st places in special and parallel slaloms at the 1975 Oxford-Cambridge Varsity ski race 2nd place at the 2nd International Physics Olympiad (in Budapest in 1968, as team member for Czechoslovakia)

References

External links Ondřej Křivánek in Hyde Park Civilization on ČT24 3.9.2022 (moderator Daniel Stach)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ondrej Krivanek

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ondrej Krivanek claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ondrej Krivanek before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ondrej Krivanek ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ondrej Krivanek

In research: Ondrej Krivanek appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ondrej Krivanek in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ondrej Krivanek is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1950 births, Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge, Alumni of the University of Leeds, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ondrej Krivanek outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ondrej Krivanek in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ondrej Krivanek means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ondrej Krivanek out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ondrej Krivanek in simple terms?

Why does Ondrej Krivanek matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ondrej Krivanek?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ondrej Krivanek.