Sometimes scientists know where they want their research to go, but find that there are no known roads to get there. Maybe the research technique doesn't exist. Or you need equipment that can't be ordered from a catalog. Or you need to work in spaces so small the challenge boggles the mind. What do you do? • Sometimes you just have to invent a way to get where you want to go. Here are several accounts of researchers who applied varying parts of inspiration and perspiration to create the ways and means of observing that which they wanted to see. continued...

Illustration (detail): Bryan Leister

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Reprinted from the HHMI Bulletin,
September 2003, pages 24-27.
©2003 Howard Hughes Medical Institute