Richard Leach Maddox 1816 -11, 1902)

In the 1870s many attempts were made to find a dry substitute for wet collodion.  In 1871 Richard Leach Maddox, an English physician, who was very into photomicrography - photographing minute organisms under the microscope, suggested putting silver bromide in a gelatin emulsion, an idea that led to the introduction of factory-produced dry plates coated with gelatin containing silver salts. marking the beginning of the modern era of photography.