In 2014 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell, and William Moerner for their fluorescence imaging techniques that beat the optical diffraction limit. While imaging with visible light, with a wavelength of hundreds of nanometers, the laureates refined their resolution to just 20 nm or so—enough to produce still images of protein complexes, cell organelles, and other biological structures in stunning detail. (See Physics Today, December 2014, page 18.)
But the resolution revolution was just getting started.
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