One of the two men who first brought the electron microscope to the North American continent in 1938 died on December 16, 1997, at his home in Columbus, Ohio. This description of Dr. Albert Prebus' life is not so much an obituary as it is a recognition of a quiet, modest, unassuming scientist, whose pioneering work in electron microscopy contributed directly to the great explosion of scientific knowledge, which has been characteristic of the last half of the twentieth century.