Abstract
Almost 60 years ago G. Gamow, a physicist, and M. Yčas, a microbiologist, published an interdisciplinary popular-science book, which tells a story about Mr. Tompkins as he explores the cellular architecture of his body on a dream journey. However, the dream of being able to zoom in into organs, cells, and organelles to uncover their atomic details, organization, real-time dynamics as well as cellular interactions has come through only in more recent years. We will reflect on recent and past developments in visualization of the complex universe of living cells and their components. How could we combine the vast amount of structural data with results from functional studies in order to ultimately obtain understanding of biological processes at the molecular level in terms of physical mechanisms? What does understanding of cellular functions mean?
