Nobel for Seeing the Invisible
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded for an innovation in optical "nanoscopy."
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded this week to Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner and German scientist Stefan Hell, for the development of "super-resolved fluorescence microscopy." Their innovation flirted with the impossible, as the limit of optical microscopes had been thought to be close to the wavelength of light - it's hard to see something smaller than what you're seeing it with. But the new laureates were motivated by the need to find a way to image the molecular machinery of the cell, which is where the important biological and biochemical action really is. They exploited techniques for turning on fluorescent proteins, and a clever multiple-exposure system to develop a tool to see things smaller than it was thought could be seen. For Dr. Eric Betzig, a Group Leader at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia, the prize is an honour, but also something of a surprise, since, at one point, he quit science entirely.
Related Links
- Nobel press release
- Nobel popular summary (PDF)
- HHMI release
- Stanford University release
- ArsTechnica article
- CBC News story
- Quirks Nobel Interview Archives