STOCKHOLM: Two Americans and a German won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than previously thought possible, allowing scientists to see how diseases developed inside the tiniest cells.

Working independently of each other, US researchers Eric Betzig and William Moerner and Stefan Hell of Germany shattered previous limits on the resolution of optical microscopes by using glowing molecules to peer inside the components of life.

Their breakthroughs, starting in the 1990s, have enabled scientists to study diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s at a molecular level, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“Due to their achievements, the optical microscope can now peer into the nanoworld,” the academy said, giving the eight-million-kronor ($1.1 million) award jointly to the three for “the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”.

Mr Betzig, 54, works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia. Mr Hell, 51, is director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, and also works at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg. Mr Moerner, 61, is a professor at Stanford University in California.

Eric Betzig.—AFP

“I was totally surprised, I couldn’t believe it,” said Mr Hell, who was born in Romania. “Fortunately, I remembered the voice of Nordmark and I realised it was real,” he added, referring to Staffan Nordmark, the academy’s permanent secretary.

The Nobel judges didn’t immediately reach Mr Moerner, who was at a conference in Brazil. The American found out about the prize from his wife after she was told by The Associated Press.

“I’m incredibly excited and happy to be included with Eric Betzig and Stefan Hell,” Mr Moerner said.

Mr Betzig said he started to tremble when he saw an incoming call from Sweden, receiving the news with a mix of happiness and fear. “Because I don’t want my life to change; I really like my life, and I’m busy enough already,” he told journalists in Munich, where he was giving a lecture.

For a long time optical microscopes were limited by the wavelength of light and other factors, so scientists believed they could never yield a resolution better than 0.2 micrometers.

William Moerner.—AP

But the three scientists were able to break that limit by using molecules that glow on command. The advance took optical microscopy into a new dimension that made it possible to study the interplay between molecules inside cells, including the aggregation of disease-related proteins, the academy said.

The technology offers advantages over an electron microscope, which offers slightly better resolution but can’t be used to examine cells that are alive.

“You really need to be able to look at living cells because life is animate — it’s what defines life,” Mr Betzig said.

Mr Hell used these methods to study nerve cells to get a better understanding of brain synapses; Mr Moerner studied proteins related to Huntington’s disease; and Mr Betzig tracked cell division inside embryos, the academy said.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2014