A tribute to Michael Ivan (Spike) Walker
Spike was known internationally as an award-winning photomicrographer. His pictures delighted many people, both microscopists and the public alike.
He won many awards and accolades for his work, including ten prizes and two honourable mentions in the Nikon Small World competition. Other awards include those from the Royal Society in 1961; the Royal Photographic Society in 2010 and again in 2016 for his incredible contribution to photography and its application in medicine.
In the Polarioid International and Polaroid United Kingdom photomicrography competitions, Spike won a Grand Prize, three first places, and three second places. He also received the 1967 Kodak Science Award for use of blue light fluorescence in the study of ciliate protozoa, and the 1984 RMS Glauert (gold) medal for photomicrography.
Spike’s passion microscopy started at the age of 10 when he received his first microscope, a present from his father that, at £4.50, cost more than his father’s weekly wage. Spike sold his first photomicrographs in 1961, flash photomicrographs of protista.
Born on the 27th October 1933 in Staffordshire, Spike graduated in zoology from the University of Liverpool in 1956. He began a dual career; from 1957 to 1989 he taught biological science in high schools and at Stafford college while also working as a freelance photomicrographer. Spike’s work has featured in many publications and photo libraries. His book Amateur Photomicrography (1971) was published by Focal Press.
Spike was an active and enthusiastic member of both the RMS and the Quekett Microscopical Club. He became a Fellow of the RMS in January 1962, and was elected to the QMC in May 1964, being made an Honorary member of the Club in 2008.
Spike took early retirement in 1989 to pursue his hobby. It was always a pleasure to visit Spike in his laboratory at his home in Appleyard, Penkridge, where Spike and Christine made visitors very welcome. His Zeiss Ultraphot III microscopes and the Reichert Zetopan would be lined up ready for action. Amongst the many contrast techniques that Spike devised or adapted was ‘Spikeberg’ a variant of Rheinberg illumination from which came images featuring a riot of colour. A needle passed through a melt of vitamin C on the surface of a slide would, when cooled, result in fantastically-coloured shapes under polarised light.
Besides his wonderful photomicrographs, Spike was also interested in wood sculpture, gardening, writing, and seventeenth and eighteenth century music. Spike was remembered by his friends for his mischievous sense of humour which, at Christmas, would feature an alternative history of microscopy and microscopists, often at the gentle expense of Carl Zeiss, for his favoured photomicroscopes were the Zeiss Ultraphots and equipment from Oberkochen.
Spike died on the 5th November 2025. We send our condolences to his family and Christine, his wife.
Words by Jeremy Sanderson