Photo credit: Bernd Schuller, Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie — File:Stefan W Hell (cropped).jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 3.0
Stefan W. Hell
born 1962 · Germany · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2014
German physicist-chemist who invented STED microscopy, letting light microscopes see inside living cells at nanometre resolution.
Nobel Prize work
Hell broke the diffraction limit of optical microscopes. His STED microscopy uses a second, doughnut-shaped laser beam to switch off fluorescence everywhere except a nanometre-sized spot, letting light microscopes resolve living-cell structures far smaller than half the wavelength of light. The prize was shared with Eric Betzig and W. E. Moerner.
Fields
Related topics
Fluorescence, NMR spectroscopy
Fluorescence reports excited-state emission; NMR reports nuclei in distinct magnetic and chemical environments.
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.