Chemistry Nobel awarded for super microscopes

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to a trio of scientists responsible for the breaking the limits of modern microscopes.

2014 Chemistry Lauteates. Photos: M. Staley/HHMI, B. Schuller, Max-Planck-Institut, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0
Nobel recipients: Betzig, Hell and Moerner.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”. Research from the scientists led to the development of techniques which allowed microscopes ‘see’ matter smaller than 0.2 micrometres, the previous limit of resolution due to the wavelength of light.

You can read more about the recipients and their lives’ work on the Nobel Prize website.

New Zealand Media coverage includes:

New Zealand Herald: Three win chemistry Nobel for super-zoom microscopes
Stuff.co.nz: Three scientists win Nobel prize for chemistry
Yahoo! NZ News: Nobel Prize for seeing how life works at molecular level