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Microscopic marvels: The glorious resolution

Nature volume 459, pages 638–639 (2009)Cite this article

"It's childish, but it still gives me great pleasure to see high-res pictures everyone told me would be impossible," says Stefan Hell of the razor-sharp silhouettes of mouse neurons on his screen.

Hell can't resist a small gloat. He frequently refers to his bitter struggle for recognition — the many years in the 1990s trying to reinvent microscopy as nanoscopy, able to reveal structures an order of magnitude smaller than light microscopy. 'You can't argue with the law of physics', was the no-can-do attitude of most microscopists at the time. They were referring back to 1873, when German physicist Ernst Abbe declared that diffraction inevitably limits the resolution of microscopy to around half the wavelength of light.

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References

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Authors
  1. Alison Abbott
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Additional information

See also page 629 and online at http://tinyurl.com/microspecial .

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Microscopy special

Cell imaging: New ways to see a smaller world

Imaging in Cell Biology

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Abbott, A. Microscopic marvels: The glorious resolution. Nature 459, 638–639 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/459638a

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