Microglia
The ability to view and characterize different neural cells including microglia began in 1880 when Nissl staining was developed by Franz Nissl. Franz Nissl and F. Robertson first described microglial cells during their histology experiments. The cell staining techniques in the 1880s showed that microglia are related to macrophages. The activation of microglia and formation of ramified microglial clusters was first noted by Victor Babeş while studying a rabies case in 1897. Babeş noted the cells were found in a variety of viral brain infections but did not know what the clusters of microglia he saw were. Pío del Río Hortega, a student of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, first called the cells "microglia" around 1920. He went on to characterize microglial response to brain lesions in 1927 and note the "fountains of microglia" present in the corpus callosum and other perinatal white matter areas in 1932. After many years of research Rio-Hortega became generally considered as the "Father of Microglia." For a long period of time little improvement was made in our knowledge of microglia. Then, in 1988, Hickey and Kimura showed that perivascular microglial cells are bone-marrow derived, and express high levels of MHC class II proteins used for antigen presentation. This confirmed Pio Del Rio-Hortega's postulate that microglial cells functioned similarly to macrophages by performing phagocytosis and antigen presentation.
Andrew McKellar
In 1940, McKellar made the first detection of molecular matter in the interstellar medium, identifying the spectrum of the organic compounds cyanogen ("CN") and methyne. ("CH"). The following year, his analysis of the spectra of the cyanogen molecules showed that the surrounding space was very cold with a temperature of approximately -271 °C. At the time, the significance of this was not appreciated; the distinguished Canadian chemist and future Nobel Laureate Gerhard Herzberg said that the temperature measurement "...has of course a very restricted meaning". Almost 25 years later Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson detected microwave radiation coming from all regions of the sky corresponding to the same temperature of -271 °C found by McKellar, thus revealing its ubiquity and relation to the radiation left over from the Big Bang. McKellar's early death, after a prolonged illness, in 1960 precluded him from consideration for the Nobel Prize awarded to Penzias and Wilson in 1978.