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.

Comments

STimulated Emission Depletion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing simulated about it. ;)

Fuck you, chemists!

[paiute]

Another Chemistry Nobel award goes to physics researchers. May the besotted and cigarette-smoke wreathed shade of RB Woodward haunt the Committee.

Re:Fuck you, chemists!

[ibmleninpro]

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.

Re:Nobel prize for Microsoft advancement

[Anonymous Coward]

The distinction between the three science related fields is not as clear as they were when Alfred Nobel wrote his will.

Re:Why Chemistry?

[CQDX]

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.

Re:Nobel prize for Microsoft advancement

[ls671]

Also, maybe they wanted to give a Nobel prize to both trios:

Physics: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura.

Chemistry: Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and William E. Moerner

And the second trio fitted better in chemistry than in physics.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe...

Re:Why Chemistry?

[sombragris]

I think it's for two reasons: first, because the technique enables to watch molecular processes at the 'single molecule' level, and this is highly significant for chemistry, obviously.

I think there might be a second reason too: the effectiveness of the technique depends on a lot of photochemical knowledge and proper selection of dyes, which again is another significant area of study and research in chemistry.

Do chip firms get Nobels for doing it in reverse?

[TechyImmigrant]

Semiconductor manufacturers don't just look at things with sub wavelength resolution, they build things with sub wavelength resolution.
 

Re:What the Hell (pun intended)

[serviscope_minor]

STED is widely used by neuroscientists. It has more than proven its worth.

[citation needed] literally.

It's used a bit. Partly because the microscopes are really expensive. It's also only reliable on fixed cells: it can't do large areas fast and needs an immense light dose for the depletion beam, making any live cell results even more dubious than usual. I've seen the paper and video claiming 50 Hz performance. Utter crap.

And finally, the resolution improvement is moderate. In practice on a commercial system you can maybe get 80nm on a good day with a following wind (50? yeah right!) if you have a pulse mode one.

For fixed cells, PALM gives better results. For live cells, high density localisation techniques also give better results. OK I am biased, but I'm naturally going to do work on the techniques I think are more promising :)

I have not seen any major breakthroughs yet where super-resolution is the enabling technology. I fully expect to because there is really cool stuff going on.