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 U.S. citizens Eric Betzig and William Moerner and Germany's Stefan
Hell won the prize for using fluorescence to take microscopes to a
new level, making it possible to study things like the creation of
synapses between brain cells in real time.
"Due to their achievements the optical microscope can now peer into
the nanoworld," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in
awarding the 8 million crown ($1.1 million) prize.
Back in 1873, scientists thought there was a limit to what could be
seen when Ernst Abbe stipulated that the resolution of an optical
microscope could never be better than 0.2 micrometers, or 500 times
smaller than the width of a human hair.
But the three Nobel winners bypassed this limit by scanning
fluorescent molecules to build up a far more detailed images,
leading to the creation of "nanoscopy", now used widely to peer into
the internal molecular machinery of cells.
Modern nanoscale microscopes can follow individual proteins to
better understand diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's or to
track the development of fertilised eggs as they divide and become
embryos.
"This is very, very important to understanding how the cell works
and understanding what goes wrong if the cell is diseased," Hell
told a news conference by telephone after learning of the award.
Hell, who is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical
Chemistry in Germany, said he was "totally surprised" by the prize,
while co-winner Betzig said he was stunned by the news.
"I have been walking around a daze for the last hour, on a nice day
in Munich, fearful that my life has changed," he told Reuters by
phone from Munich, where he was scheduled to give a lecture on
Wednesday.
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Betzig works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn,
United States, while Moerner is professor at Stanford University.
Chemistry was the third of this year's Nobel prizes. The prize is
named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded
since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in
accordance with his will.
The chemistry prize has often lived in the shadow of physics and its
star scientists such as Albert Einstein, though it was the field
that was arguably closest to the heart of Nobel's own work
developing dynamite and other explosives.
As winners of the chemistry prize, the laureates enter an exclusive
club of researchers such as nuclear pioneer Ernest Rutherford and
Linus Pauling, the only person to win two Nobels on his own -- for
chemistry in 1954 and peace in 1962.
(1 US dollar = 7.2052 Swedish crown)
(Additional reporting by Stephen Brown in Berlin, Writing by Ben
Hirschler and Niklas Pollard, Editing by Simon Johnson and Angus
MacSwan)
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