Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical
Chemistry in Göttingen is to receive the 2011 Körber European Science Prize
endowed with 750,000 euros for his pioneering discoveries in the field of
optics. Every year, the Körber Prize is awarded to an outstanding scientist
working in Europe on particularly promising projects. The prizewinner is
selected by an international trustee committee chaired by Prof. Dr. Peter Gruss,
President of the Max Planck Society.
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, the half wavelength of which roughly corresponds to
those 200 nanometres. The STED microscopy which the physicist Stefan Hell
invented and developed to application readiness, allows scientists to gain
insights into the nano world far beyond this limit.
Biologists and physiologists
in particular value this breakthrough, because living cells or tissue can only
be observed using optical microscopes. In 2008, for instance, neurophysiologists
using the new resolution of only a few dozen nanometres succeeded in visualising
the movements of tiny synaptic components for the first time. In addition, the
concept underlying STED microscopy opened up new prospects for the further
development of optical storage media.
Stefan Hell has been a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical
Chemistry in Göttingen since 2002. Born in Banat, Romania in 1962, he studied
physics at the University of Heidelberg, where he also did his PhD. Following
research stations at the EMBL in Heidelberg and the universities of Turku and
Oxford, in addition to his work in Göttingen he became a division head at the
German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg
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