The son of Charles Daghlian, director of Dartmouth's Electron Microscope Group, once described his father's job by saying, "Dad, the only job worse than yours is all the others."
It is this inter-disciplinary nature of Daghlian's work that he relishes most. He has worked for Dartmouth Medical School as well as the biology, chemistry, physics and engineering departments.
"If I were a regular faculty member with interests this diverse, people would call me a dilettante and say I wasn't doing a good job," Daghlian said.
Electron microscopes are scientific instruments that use a beam of highly energetic electrons that can examine widely varying types of objects on a very fine scale. Dartmouth set up its Electron Microscope Group in 1984 so that a centralized office could maintain these highly precise instruments and train faculty how to use them properly.
Recent projects have included scanning bird feathers for their iron content as a project for the biology department, studying various types of cells and examining the topography of iron oxide for an engineering project, he said.
Daghlian's path to his current job has been "non-linear."
He first learned how to use electron microscopes when scanning fossils as a student pursuing a doctorate in paleobotany,or the study of extinct plants. He continued to work with similar equipment while a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, where he eventually became a director of their electron microscope facility.
A typical workday includes a range of activities for Daghlian. His office is responsible for "troubleshooting" problems with the microscopes, as well as managing the office's budget and explaining how the microscopes work to Dartmouth faculty and local elementary school groups alike.
Dartmouth owns two types of electron microscopes: scanning and transmission electron microscopes, Daghlian said.
Scanning electron microscopes work by sliding a very tiny probe, sometimes made out of silicon nitrate, across the surface of an object. Some scanning electron microscopes can study the magnetic fields of an object using a similar magnetic probe, according to Daghlian.
By contrast, transmission electron microscopes function more like slide projectors. They shine beams of electrons through the specimen, much the way slide projectors shine beams of light through slides, and then project an image onto a phosphor screen.
Dartmouth owns two transmission electron microscopes and one scanning microscope. One of the two transmissional microscopes is especially useful because it can study objects at especially cold temperatures, Daghlian said.
