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Jacques Dubochet
born 1942 · Switzerland · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2017
Swiss biophysicist who discovered how to vitrify water around biomolecules for electron microscopy; he shared the 2017 Nobel Prize that launched the 'resolution revolution' of cryo-EM.
Nobel Prize work
Shared with Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for cryo-electron microscopy: Dubochet solved the decisive sample problem by vitrifying water — plunge-freezing biomolecules so fast that the surrounding water becomes amorphous glass rather than damaging ice crystals, allowing high-resolution imaging of biomolecules in solution.
Fields
Related topics
Cryo-EM, protein crystallography
Structural biologists infer molecular architecture from scattered electrons or X-ray diffraction, with distinct sample preparation and data-processing limits.
Atomic-resolution microscopy (AFM, STM, imaging single bonds)
How scanning probe microscopes map surfaces atom by atom and, under carefully controlled conditions, reveal molecular structure and bond contrast.