Stefan Hell
Stefan W. Hell ( born December 23, 1962 in Arad, Romania) is a physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen.
Life and work
Stefan Hell studied physics in 1981 at the University of Heidelberg. After finishing his studies in 1987 (Diploma ), he started with Siegfried Hunklinger his doctorate which he completed in 1990. The topic of his thesis was: " Figure transparent microstructures in the confocal microscope." Then he was briefly worked as a freelance inventor. During this time he worked on ways to construct microscopes that enable higher resolution and laid the foundation for the 4Pi microscopy.
From 1991 to 1993 he worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in the main Laboratory in Heidelberg .. He succeeded here, the principle of 4Pi microscopy to demonstrate practically and improve the depth resolution significantly.
He was then hired in 1993 as a group leader at the University of Turku in the Department of Medical Physics, where he developed the principle of STED microscopy. Parallel to this was Stefan Hell from 1993 to 1994 for a total of six months at the University of Oxford visiting scientist in the field of engineering sciences. His Habilitation in Physics, in 1996 again in Heidelberg. The following year he became head of a junior research group and conducted research in the field of optical microscopy.
On 15 October 2002 Bright was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. In addition to his work in Göttingen he was in 2003 as an adjunct professor head of the " High Resolution Optical Microscopy " at the German Cancer Research Center at the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg. In 2004 he was also appointed Honorary Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen.
With the invention and development of Stimulated Emission Depletion ( STED ) microscopy and related microscopy method was able to show that the conventional in about half a wavelength of light (~ 200 nm) can be overcome limited resolution in fluorescence light microscopy him. Hell could practically demonstrate how to decouple the resolution of the fluorescence microscope by the diffraction ( diffraction limit ) and at a fraction of the light wavelength ( nanometer range) may increase for the first time. This was true since the work of Ernst Abbe (1873 ) as a de facto impossible. For this achievement, and their significance for other areas of science, such as the life sciences and medical research, he was awarded the 10th German Future Prize on 23 November 2006. Since 2013 he is a member of the Leopoldina.
He is married and has two sons and a daughter.
Awards
- 2000: Prize of the International Commission for Optics
- 2001: Helmholtz Price for Metrology, co- recipient
- 2002: Berthold Leibinger Innovation Prize, 3rd Prize, co- recipient
- 2004: Prize of the Berlin -Brandenburg Academy of Sciences - sponsored by the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation
- 2006: Robert B. Woodward Scholar, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
- 2007: Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics
- 2009: Otto Hahn Prize for the development of new microscopic techniques, which have overcome the previous resolution limit.
- 2010: Ernst Hellmut Vits Prize
- 2011: Hansen Family Award
- 2012: Science Award of the Fritz Behrens Foundation
- 2012: Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy
- 2013: Carus Medal