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Nobel Prize In Chemistry Awarded To Trio For Microscope Advancement
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner for their work in bypassing the limits of traditional optical microscopy. Hell developed a method called Simulated Emission Depletion microscopy, which uses one laser beam to cause a collection of molecules to fluoresce, and another laser beam to cancel out that fluorescence everywhere other than a nanometer-sized volume. Repeating this process over an entire sample provides nanometer resolution for the resulting image. Betzig and Moerner did important work on Single-Molecule microscopy. "The method relies upon the possibility to turn the fluorescence of individual molecules on and off. Scientists image the same area multiple times, letting just a few interspersed molecules glow each time. Superimposing these images yields a dense super-image resolved at the nanolevel." The three scientists' work was pivotal to enabling nano-scale microscopy and allowing detailed study of objects at the molecular level.
Nothing simulated about it. ;)
Because it's a molecular spectroscopy technique. This is work is in the realm of chemical physics, the overlap of physics and chemistry. There are more than a few occasions where physicists have been awarded the prize in Chemistry because their work has had its greatest impact in chemistry research.
Spectroscopist here (chemical physics). we're not the bad guys here! It's the biochemists fault!
Here are the most recent "pure" chemical physics Nobel prizes: 2014, 2013 (I'd argue this is more a biochemical win than anything), 1999, 1998, 1992, 1991. Maybe you could argue fullerenes in 1996, since Kroto and Curl are pure-bred spectroscopists.
Organic/inorganic chemistry: 2011, 2010, 2007 (sort of), 2005, 2001, 2000, 1994, 1990
Then there's biochemistry: 2013, 2012, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2002, 1997, 1993...
I'd say at the rate that organic chemistry develops, I think they're pretty well-represented, same with physical chemistry. Can you think of a major development in organic chemistry outside of cross-coupling and Grubbs metathesis that is Nobel prize worthy at this point? Dave MacMillian has iminium catalysis and chiral Diels-Alder, perhaps, but it's still early. After Corey's win in 1990, I can't imagine that total synthesis needs another Nobel, unfortunately. There is a lot of good developments in this field but nothing stands out to me for Nobel at the moment.
In terms of spectroscopy, maybe the next "big" win is surface-enhanced Raman? Solid state NMR? There's the Nature paper from last year where from John Doyle at Harvard demonstrating enantiomer-specific spectroscopy using microwave spectroscopy, that could be a big deal in the next 10 years perhaps.
Anyway, tl;dr: I'd argue biochemistry is over-represented, especially in the general literature, but that might just be me being bitter.