The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to two Americans, Eric Betzig and William Moerner, and a German, Stefan Hell, on Wednesday 8 October “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy,” nanoscopy, as the jury said in its press release.

The laureates developed two methods enabling microscopy on a nanometric scale, and hence the study of living cells in the finest detail.

Stefan Hell, 51 years old, discovered “stimulated emission depletion (STED)” microscopy. Eric Betzig, 54 years old, and William Moerner, 61 years old, each working separately, created the method known as “single-molecule microscopy.”

Work useful in understanding, in particular, diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.

Further information in the Nobel Prize official press release
See also the diagrams explaining STED microscopy, and single-molecule microscopy

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