October 6, 2016

Yesterday, October 5, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry to three scientists for developing tiny machines with huge potential impacts. Bernard L. Feringa of the University of Groningenin in the Netherlands, Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg in France, and Sir J. Frasier Stoddart of Northwestern University in the United States were all awarded shares of the prize for their pioneering work in the field of nanotechnology.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

Nanotechnology is the systematic production of structures that are slightly larger than atoms and molecules. Nanotechnology relies on scientific and engineering disciplines, along with manufacturing technologies, to design and produce useful products. It involves working on the nanometer scale, or nanoscale. Nano means billionth. A nanometer is 0.000000001 meter ( ¹/25,400,000 inch)—approximately ¹/100,000 the width of a human hair or 3 to 5 times the diameter of a single atom. The nanoscale is considered to cover dimensions between 1 and 100 nanometers. Nanoscale materials, and the objects made from them, display fundamentally different properties and behavior than the same materials at larger scales.

Nanoscale machines were proposed in 1959 by the American physicist Richard Feynman—himself a Nobel laureate. But the technological difficulties associated with working on such a small scale stymied researchers for decades. Starting in the 1980’s, the three 2016 laureates began working separately on different materials, such as musclelike pulleys and spinning motors, that will form the backbone of future nanoscale devices. Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize virtually every technological field, from computers to medicine. Today, researchers are building upon the inventions of Feringa, Sauvage, and Stoddart to design the tiny machines of the future.

October 13, 2014

Two Americans and a German have won the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their “ground-breaking” efforts in developing ways to peer more closely at the inner workings of living cells using optical (light-bending) microscopes than scientists had thought possible. The winners, all physical chemists, are William E. Moerner of Stanford University in Stanford, California, and Eric Betzig of the Janelia Research Campus at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia; and Stefan W. Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, both in Germany. The scientists were honored “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy,” which, the Nobel Committee said, is producing “new knowledge of greatest benefit to mankind … on a daily basis.” They will share the $1.1-million prize equally.

The scientists, working independently, turned the microscope into a nanoscope–a tool for seeing “the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells, according to the Nobel Committee. “They can see how molecules create synapses [bridges] between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate [clump]; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.” Other types of microscopy kill living cells.

Fluorescence microscopy allows researchers to track the proteins involved in Alzheimer’s disease as they clump. In this photomicrograph, the round, yellow-brown spots, or plaques, are made up of abnormal amyloid protein. (© Jan Naslund, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden)

In fluorescence microscopy, cells or parts of cells are stained with green fluorescent protein (GFP), a naturally occurring molecule that glows green when exposed to blue or ultraviolet light. The light is typically captured by a digital camera or another detector connected to the microscope. By using GFP effectively and manipulating the captured images, scientists can identify tiny details within a cell. Since the 1870′s, scientists had believed that optical microscopes would never be able to visualize anything smaller than 0.2 micrometers, a limit based on the wavelength of light. Using fluorescence microscopy, researchers can visualize objects that are at least three times as small as that. Under certain circumstances, the resolution (ability to produce a clear image) may be even greater.

Additional World Book articles:

• Ernst Abbe
• Fluorescence
• Nobel Prizes in chemistry (table)
• Nobel Prizes (2008) (a Back in Time article)