Stefan Hell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Stefan Walter Hell
|
|
|---|---|
Hell in 2010
|
|
| Born | 23 December 1962 Arad, Romania
|
| Citizenship | Germany Romania |
| Alma mater | Heidelberg University |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Known for | STED microscopy RESOLFT GSD microscopy 4Pi microscope Minflux Multifocal multiphoton microscopy< Three photon microscopy |
| Awards | Pour le Mérite (2022) Wilhelm Exner Medal (2016) Onsager Medal (2016) Glenn T. Seaborg Medal (2015) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2014) Kavli Prize (2014) Paul Karrer Gold Medal (2013) Meyenburg Prize (2011) Körber European Science Prize (2011) Otto Hahn Prize (2009) Lower Saxony State Prize (2008) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2008) German Future Prize (2006) Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis (2002) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, optics |
| Institutions | Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences (1997–) Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (2016–) German Cancer Research Center (2003–17) University of Turku (1993–96) |
| Thesis | Imaging of transparent microstructures in a confocal microscope (1990) |
| Doctoral advisor | Siegfried Hunklinger |
| Notable students | Ilaria Testa (postdoc) Francisco Balzarotti (postdoc) |
Stefan Walter Hell (born December 23, 1962) is a brilliant Romanian-German physicist. He is a director at two important research centers in Germany. These are the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. In 2014, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He shared this amazing award with Eric Betzig and William Moerner. They were honored for creating "super-resolved fluorescence microscopy." This new type of microscope lets scientists see tiny things in much more detail than ever before!
Contents
Stefan Hell's Early Life and Education
Stefan Hell was born in 1962 in Arad, Romania. He grew up in a nearby town called Sântana. When he was 15, in 1978, his family moved to West Germany. His father was an engineer, and his mother was a teacher. They settled in a city called Ludwigshafen.
In 1981, Stefan began studying at Heidelberg University. He earned his doctorate in physics in 1990. His main teacher was Siegfried Hunklinger, a physicist who studied solid materials. Stefan's special project was about "Imaging transparent microstructures in a confocal microscope." After finishing his studies, he worked on making microscopes even better. He focused on improving how clearly they could see things in depth. This work later led to something called the 4Pi microscope.
Developing New Microscopes
From 1991 to 1993, Stefan Hell worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. There, he showed how the 4-Pi microscope could work. From 1993 to 1996, he led a research group at the University of Turku in Finland. This is where he came up with the idea for Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy. He also spent six months as a visiting scientist at the University of Oxford in England.
In 1996, he completed his "habilitation" in physics at the University of Heidelberg. This is a special qualification needed to become a professor in some European countries. In 2002, Stefan Hell became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. He started a new department there called Nanobiophotonics. Since 2003, he has also led the "Optical Nanoscopy division" at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He is also an honorary professor at the University of Göttingen.
Breaking the Light Barrier
Stefan Hell's most famous work is the invention of STED microscopy and other similar methods. Before his work, regular light microscopes could only see things clearly if they were larger than about 200 nanometers. This limit was set by the nature of light itself, known as the diffraction limit. Scientists thought it was impossible to see anything smaller with a light microscope.
But Stefan Hell proved them wrong! He showed that you could make a microscope see things much, much smaller. He could see details down to the nanometer scale. This was a huge breakthrough in science. It was like making a magnifying glass that could see individual atoms! For this amazing achievement, he received the German Innovation Award in 2006. In 2014, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was the second Nobel winner from the Banat Swabian community, after Herta Müller.
Awards and Honors
Stefan Hell has received many important awards for his groundbreaking work. These awards show how much his discoveries have helped science.
- Prize of the International Commission for Optics, 2000
- Helmholtz-Award for metrology, 2001
- Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis, 2002
- Carl-Zeiss Research Award, 2002
- Karl-Heinz-Beckurts-award, 2002
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy Award, 2004
- Robert B. Woodward Scholar, Harvard University, 2006
- Innovation Award of the German Federal President, 2006
- Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics, 2007
- Member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 2007
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, 2008
- Lower Saxony State Prize, 2008
- Nomination for European Inventor of the Year, 2008
- Method of the year 2008 in Nature Methods
- Otto-Hahn-Preis, 2009
- Ernst-Hellmut-Vits-Prize, 2010
- Hansen Family Award, 2011
- Körber European Science Prize, 2011
- The Gothenburg Lise Meitner prize, 2010/11
- Meyenburg Prize, 2011
- Science Prize of the Fritz Behrens Foundation, 2012
- Doctor Honoris Causa of Vasile Goldiș Western University of Arad, 2012
- Romanian Academy, Honorary Member, 2012
- Paul Karrer Gold Medal, University of Zürich, 2013
- Member of German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 2013
- Carus Medal of the Leopoldina, 2013
- Kavli Prize, 2014
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2014
- Romanian Royal Family: Knight Commander of the Order of the Crown, 2015
- Romania: Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania, 2015
- Glenn T. Seaborg Medal, 2015
- Wilhelm Exner Medal, 2016
- Foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016
- Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society (HonFRMS), 2017
- Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
- Pour le Mérite, 2022
See also
- In Spanish: Stefan Hell para niños
