Vespers and vampires: A lifelong microscopic search for the smallest of things

Histology, the study of tissues of the body, was greatly hindered prior to the middle of the 17th century. The communication of venous and arterial blood flow for instance, remained the subject of speculation, because vessels other than veins, arteries, venules, and arterioles are typically too small to see (Hwa & Aird, 2007). Did blood pool into organs and reside as in a sponge, arriving and departing by the blood vessels one could see with the naked eye, dissect, and hold with a forceps? Some biologists suspected that smaller connecting networks existed. The Italian anatomist Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) was able to glimpse capillary networks in skin of a frog, an animal that he referred to as a “microscope of nature,” with the aid of only a magnifying lens (West, 2013). His definitive descriptions were accomplished later, with a compound microscope (reviewed by Hwa & Aird, 2007). The microscope resolved microanatomical mysteries, and centuries later, we continue to glimpse ever more details at the tissue and cellular levels. Big thinkers and those with a steadfast focus have been required to make strides in our understanding of histology. This commentary is a review of advances in histology and cytology, or microanatomy, during the last century, and a celebration of Professor Kunwar Bhatnagar (1934–2021, Prof. Emeritus, University of Louisville), who explored many of these methods in his anatomical studies, often to report findings in the pages of The Anatomical Record (Figure 1). Kunwar Prasad Bhatnagar was born on March 21, 1934, in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India. He recalled living in a “castle-like” home with his parents and siblings (Bhatnagar, unpublished autobiography). He was named in honor of the Kunwar Baba Temple (Figure 1a), which his parents attended (Prasad translates as “offering”). His father, Narain Swaroop Bhatnagar, was a statistician. He fondly recalled day trips with his father, who was an avid walker. He credits his mother, Bhagawati Devi Bhatnagar, for helping him chart his career path, by asking an uncle (a professor of physics) to arrange his entry into biological studies. His early education was in India (B.S. at Agra University, 1956; M.S. in Zoology at Vikram University, 1958). He frequently mentioned his teacher Dr. Shyama Charan Srivastava at Agra University. Science was of lifelong importance to Prof. Bhatnagar, who wrote that in marriage he hoped to find a “girl of scientific parentage” (Bhatnagar, unpublished). A year after his father's passing, Kunwar came to Buffalo, NY, to begin his graduate education in the State University at Buffalo, under the mentorship of Prof. Frank Kallen. This career-building path was blessed and supported by his father-in-law, Brahma Shankar Varma, a chemist. A year after his arrival, Kunwar's wife Indu and his daughters, Divya and Jyoti, joined him in Buffalo (Bhatnagar, unpublished). During his lifetime, microscopy charted a path of ever-increasing resolution of more minute detail, and during his long career, he avidly used these instruments to solve more mysteries.