Crewe, 82, was first to image atom

Albert V. Crewe, the University of Chicago physicist who developed the high-resolution electron microscope that captured the first image of an individual atom, died Wednesday at his home in the Lake Michigan community of Dune Acres, Ind. He was 82.

The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, daughter Jennifer said.

Crewe's research opened a new window into the Lilliputian world of the fundamental building blocks of nature, giving scientists and engineers in fields as varied as computing and biology a powerful new tool to understand the architecture of things such as living tissue and metal alloys.

"It was extremely dramatic in 1970 when he saw single atoms," said Oscar Kapp, a University of Chicago biochemist who worked with Crewe on the project as a graduate student and continued to collaborate with him throughout his career.