Nobel Prize awarded to Prof. Dr. Stefan Hell

A former associate of the Cremer Lab, Prof. Dr. Stefan Hell, was awarded the Nobel Prize 2014 in Chemistry for his work on advanced far field light microscopy. Three scientists share the award: Two Scientists from USA, Prof. Eric Betzig and Prof. William Moerner, for developing single molecule microscopy using photoactivable proteins, and Prof. Stefan Hell from Germany, who has been awarded for the development of Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy, a "focused nanoscopy" method. (Scientifc background given at www.nobelprize.org)

Prof. Hell has published a number of papers on the development and application of advanced optical microscopy techniques together with Prof. Cremer. A particular highlight has been on the development of 4Pi microscopy; the basic concept of this "focused nanoscopy" method was already conceived in the 1970s by the brothers Thomas and Christoph Cremer [C. Cremer, T. Cremer (1978), see below].

 

Some joint publications on 4Pi and STED microscopy:

  • S. W. Hell, S. Lindek, C. Cremer, and E. H. K. Stelzer, "Measurement of 4pi-confocal point spread function proves 75 nm axial resolution," Appl Phys Lett, vol. 64, no. 11, pp. 1335-1337, 1994. pdf
  • S. W. Hell, E. H. Stelzer, S. Lindek, and C. Cremer, "Confocal microscopy with an increased detection aperture: type-B 4Pi confocal microscopy," Opt. Lett., vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 222-224, 1994. pdf
  • P. E. Hänninen, S. W. Hell, J. Salo, E. Soini, and C. Cremer, "Two-photon excitation 4Pi confocal microscope: Enhanced axial resolution microscope for biological research," Appl Phys Lett, vol. 66, pp. 1698-1700, 1995. pdf
  • M. Schrader, F. Meinecke, K. Bahlmann, M. Kroug, C. Cremer, E. Soini, and S. W. Hell, "Monitoring the excited state of a fluorophore in a microscope by stimulated emission," Bioimaging, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 147-153, 1995. pdf
  • M. Lang, T. Jegou, I. Chung, K. Richter, S. Münch, A. Udvarhelyi, C. Cremer, P. Hemmerich, J. Engelhardt, S. W. Hell, and others, "Three-dimensional organization of promyelocytic leukemia nuclear bodies," J. Cell Sci., vol. 123, no. 3, pp. 392-400, 2010. pdf
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    For more information on the history of superresolution fluorescence microscopy see C. Cremer, B.R. Masters (2013) Resolution enhancement techniques in microscopy. Eur. Phys. J. H 38: 281-344. Direct link to pdf

     

    Publications of the Cremer lab explicitly mentioned in the justification of the nobel prize:

  • C. Cremer and T. Cremer (1978) "Considerations on a laser-scanning-microscope with high resolution and depth of field," Microsc. Acta. 81: 31-44. pdf
  • R. Heintzmann and C. Cremer (1999),"Lateral modulated excitation microscopy: Improvement of resolution by using a diffraction grating," Proc. SPIE. 3568:185-195. pdf

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