US scientists Eric Betzig,William Moerner and German scientist Stefan W. Hell have won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2014 for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.
With nanoscopy scientists can observe viruses, proteins and molecules smaller than 0.0000002 metres.
For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014 ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension, said the Nobel Assembly.
