Company History
Brookhaven Instruments was founded in 1981 by Dr. Bruce Weiner, a physical chemist, and Dr. Walther Tscharnuter, a physicist. The two met in 1970 as postdoctoral associates working under Prof. Ben Chu at Stony Brook University, who was leading one of the only laboratories in the world at that time investigating Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS).
Celebrate 40 years of particle characterization expertise by reading our interview with company co-founder Dr. Bruce Weiner.
1981
Company founded by Dr. Bruce Weiner, a physical chemist, and Dr. Walther Tscharnuter, a physicist
1981
The original BI-200SM goniometer used photomultiplier tubes instead of modern avalanche photodiodes. The 2030AT correlator required a specially designed interface instead of the standard readily-available USB interface we use today. All of the measurement software ran on MS-DOS and PC-DOS!
1980s
Brookhaven Instruments pioneers high-resolution particle sizing with the DCP and XDC centrifuge
1980s
The BI-8000AT correlator was housed in a 40 lb. computer with a 20 lb. monitor. It came equipped with a whopping 20MB hard drive and utilized 5 1/4″ floppy disks.
1980s
The BI-90 was one of Brookhaven’s earliest particle sizing instruments. Originally, data could not be saved digitally; measurements had to be printed on a dot matrix printer. A later upgrade allowed the BI-90 to interface with an IBM-AT compatible computer, giving it the ability to view and recall measurements.
1990s
Zeta potential, for the characterization of charge on colloids, proteins and nanoparticles, with Dr. Tscharnuter’s ground-breaking design of the first commercially available Phase Analysis Light Scattering instrument, the ZetaPALS. These systems originally included a built-in desktop computer and monitor but as computing technology shrank, this became no longer necessary.
1991
The first single-board correlator, the BI-9000AT
1993
First combined DLS instrument for sizing and ELS, electrophoretic light scattering, for zeta potential
1994
First backscatter DLS instrument commercially available for concentrates, the FOQELS
1998
First instrument to combine four light scattering technologies in one instrument – DLS, ELS, SLS, and PALS – for protein, nanoparticle and polymer characterization
2002
Small-volume, flow-through, fixed angle SLS instrument, the BI-MwA, for Size Exclusion Chromatography
2009
ParSEC, a full-featured Chromatography software package
2010
Particle Solutions, an integrated software package for running DLS, SLS, ELS, & PALS in one instrument
2013
Combining backscatter for protein and nanoparticle sizing, 90º for colloid sizing, and 15º for zeta potential, three angles in one instrument in the NanoBrook Omni
2021
Brookhaven Instruments celebrates its 40th anniversary!
Learn More about Particle Characterization
Each month, our experts explore another topic in particle characterization.
Join the Brookhaven Learning Corner community today!