Stefan Hell – Prizewinner 2011

How deeply can we penetrate into the details of the visible world with optical microscopes? Previously, the law formulated by Ernst Abbe in 1873 was regarded as the absolute lower limit. Objects lying closer to each other than 200 millionths of a millimetre, i.e. about one two hundredth of a hair's breadth, can no longer be distinguished from one another. The reason for this is the wave nature of light. With a groundbreaking idea Stefan Hell forged ahead into this nano world. He constructed high-resolution optical microscopes that increase the resolution multiple times which was previously considered impossible. For his discoveries he received the Körber European Science Prize 2011.