AlHijjah 14, 1435, Oct 8, 2014, SPA -- Eric Betzig, Stefan W Hell and William E Moerner won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry for having "ingeniously circumvented" the limitation of previous technology to allow scientists to see particles smaller than half the wavelength of light, according to dpa. "Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced. The techniques the three developed allow scientists to study living cells in their tiniest molecular detail and produce "new knowledge of greatest benefit to mankind." Romanian-born German citizen Hell, director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, received the award for developing stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. The technique uses two laser beams to provide images smaller than 0.2 micrometres. US citizens Betzig, at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virgina, and Moerner, at Stanford University, worked separately in developing single-molecule microscopy. By this method, the ability of molecules to glow under light are turned off and on at different times so that images of them can be made and superimposed to yield "a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel." Speaking by phone to reporters at the Swedish Academy, Hell said he was "totally surprised" to learn he had been awarded the prize. "It took me a while to realize it, I must say," he said. Hell said his discovery had helped contribute to "a) understanding how the cell works, and b) understanding what goes wrong if the cell is somehow diseased, if some disease sets in." Betzig, Moerner and Hell will share the prize, worth 8 million kronor (1.1 million dollars).
