The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 (Oct 8, 2014)

Eric Betzig, U.S. citizen. Born 1960 in Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Ph.D. 1988 from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. Group Leader at Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA.

For his undergraduate degree, Betzig read Physics at the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 1983. He then went on to study for a Master of Science (MS) and PhD in Applied and Engineering physics at Cornell University completing these in 1985 and 1988, respectively.

After receiving his PhD, Betzig worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the Semiconductor Physics Research Department. In 1996, Betzig left academia to become vice president of research and development at Ann Arbor Machine Company, then owned by his father Robert Betzig. Here he developed Flexible Adaptive Servohydraulic Technology (FAST) but did not acheive commercial success.

Betzig then returned to the field of microscopy, developing photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), and in 2006 he joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus as a group leader to work on developing super high-resolution flourescence microscopy techniques.

Stefan W. Hell, German citizen. Born 1962 in Arad, Romania. Ph.D. 1990 from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and Division head at the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany.

Stefan Hell began his studies at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) in 1981, where he received his doctorate in physics in 1990. His thesis advisor was the solid-state physicist Siegfried Hunklinger. The title of the thesis was “Imaging of transparent microstructures in a confocal microscope”. He was an independent inventor for a short period thereafter working on improving depth (axial) resolution in confocal microscopy, which became later known as the 4Pi microscope. Resolution is the possibility to separate two similar objects in close proximity and is therefore the most important property of a microscope.

From 1991 to 1993 Hell worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, where he succeeded in demonstrating the principles of 4-Pi microscopy. From 1993 to 1996 he worked as a group leader at the University of Turku (Finland) in the department for Medical Physics, where he developed the principle for stimulated emission depletion STED microscopy. From 1993 to 1994 Hell was also for 6 months a visiting scientist at the University of Oxford (England). He received his habilitation in physics from the University of Heidelberg in 1996. On October 15, 2002 Hell became a director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistryand he established the department of Nanobiophotonics. Since 2003 Hell has also been the leader of the department "Optical Nanoscopy division" at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg.

With the invention and subsequent development of Stimulated Emission Depletion microscopy and related microscopy methods, he was able to show that one can substantially improve the resolving power of the fluorescence microscope, previously limited to half the wavelength of the employed light (> 200 nanometers). A microscope's resolution is its most important property. Hell was the first to demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, how one can decouple the resolution of the fluorescence microscope from diffraction and increase it to a fraction of the wavelength of light (to the nanometer scale). Ever since the work of Ernst Karl Abbe in 1873, this feat was not thought possible. For this achievement and its significance for other fields of science, such as the life-sciences and medical research, he received the 10th German Innovation Award (Deutscher Zukunftspreis) on the 23rd of November, 2006.

William E. Moerner, U.S. citizen. Born 1953 in Pleasanton, CA, USA. Ph.D. 1982 from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. Harry S. Mosher Professor in Chemistry and Professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

Moerner attended Washington University in St. Louis for undergraduate studies as an Alexander S. Langsdorf Engineering Fellow, and received three degrees: a B.S. in Physics with Final Honors, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with Final Honors, and an A.B. in Mathematics summa cum laude in 1975. This was followed by graduate study, partially supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, at Cornell University in the group of Albert J. Sievers III. He received a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Physics in 1978 and 1982, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis was on vibrational relaxation dynamics of an IR-laser-excited molecular impurity mode in alkali halide lattices. Throughout his school years, Moerner was a straight A student from 1963 to 1982, and won both the Dean's Award for Unusually Exceptional Academic Achievement as well as the Ethan A. H. Shepley Award for Outstanding Achievement when he graduated from college.

W.E. Moerner worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California as a Research Staff Member from 1981-1988, a Manager from 1988-1989, and Project Leader from 1989-1995. After an appointment as Visiting Guest Professor of Physical Chemistry at ETH Zurich (1993-1994), he assumed the Distinguished Chair in Physical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego from 1995-1998. In 1997 he was named the Robert Burns Woodward Visiting Professor at Harvard University. His research group moved to Stanford University in 1998 where he became Professor of Chemistry (1998), Harry S. Mosher Professor (2003), and Professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics (2005). Moerner was appointed Department Chair for Chemistry from 2011-2014. His current areas of research and interest include: single-molecule spectroscopy and super-resolution microscopy, physical chemistry, chemical physics, biophysics, nanoparticle trapping, nanophotonics, photorefractive polymers, and spectral hole-burning. As of May 2014, W. E. was listed as a faculty advisor in 26 theses written by Stanford graduate students. As of 16 May 2014, there are 386 publications listed in Moerner's full CV.

Recent editorial and advisory boards Moerner has served on include: Member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB); Advisory Board Member for the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academica Sinica, Taiwan; Advisory Editorial Board Member for Chemical Physics Letters; Advisory Board Member for the Center for Biomedical Imaging at Stanford.; and Chair of the Stanford University Health and Safety Committee.