Eric Betzig sums up his career in one word: failure. This might be true because he actually set out to revolutionize optical microscopy, but by any other standard, his career has been quite the opposite. In fact, a better word to describe it might be 'unconventional'.

As a graduate student in applied physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Betzig achieved what many deemed an impossible feat — proving that resolution limits of optics were not written in stone, which launched near-field optics. That work helped garner him a coveted spot at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey.

Betzig spent the early 1990s churning out papers, including one describing the first single-molecule microscope. But once he began to realize the real limits to the technology and others started to crowd the field, he lost interest. “I hate driving a bandwagon,” he says.

Feeling the need for a radical career move, he succumbed to his father's urging and joined the family machine-tool company in Michigan as vice-president of research and development. He wanted to apply cutting-edge technology to reduce the time spent machining parts. He achieved his technical goal, but found that the industry wasn't ready for such advanced tools. “I couldn't sell the thing,” he says.

Now seven years out of Bell Labs, Betzig began looking for a new niche for his talents. He spent two years at home working out a theory for making dynamic super-high-resolution imaging practical. But how was he going to convince someone to pay him to turn his idea into reality?

An invitation from his former Bell Labs boss, Nobel laureate Horst Störmer, to give a seminar at Columbia University was Betzig's first step back to academia. Soon, he was in touch with the leaders of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's new Janelia Farm Research Campus near Leesburg, Virginia — known as the 'biological Bell Labs'. Now a group leader at Janelia, Betzig is on track to push the boundaries of optical microscopy once again. “I'm spoiled,” he says. “All of my adult jobs have left me with complete freedom to come up with what I wanted.”

At Janelia, they share his view of how to do research, providing a free, interdisciplinary and collaborative environment in which to take on high-risk projects. Even though he can't believe his luck, Betzig knows the clock is ticking. “With the level of resources I have at Janelia, I'm going to rip through these ideas in six years.”