Stefan
W. Hell’s Speech at the Nobel Banquet
10 December 2014
Your
Majesties, Your
Royal Highnesses, Ladies
and Gentlemen,
What a week, what a day, and what
a night...!
I cannot imagine anything more
exhilarating than to stand here this evening – also on behalf of my colleagues
W. E. Moerner and Eric Betzig – thanking the Swedish Academy and the Nobel
Foundation for the honor that has been bestowed upon us. We are so grateful to
all who have supported us on our path and – above all – we feel very, very
humbled.
Like all laureates, each of us
three has his own road to this magnificent hall. Our personal stories have been
quite different.
Yet – we have much in common:
passion for what we do, and fascination with things that cannot be done, or –
let’s say – things that cannot be done...supposedly.
Erwin Schrödinger, who spoke at
this banquet eighty-one years ago tonight, wrote: “it is fair to state that we
are not going to experiment with single particles any more than we will raise
dinosaurs in the zoo”.
Well, one of us, W. E.,
discovered just the opposite – single molecules can indeed be seen and played
with individually.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, what
do we learn from this?
First. Erwin Schrödinger would
never have gone on to write “Jurassic Park”...
Second. As a Nobel Laureate you
should say “this or that is never going to happen”, because you will increase
your chances tremendously – of being remembered – decades later – in a Nobel
banquet speech.
And so, – on to superresolution
fluorescence imaging. According to the belief, molecules closer together than
200 nanometers could not be told apart with focused light. This is because, in
a packed molecular crowd, the molecules shout out their fluorescence
simultaneously, causing their signal, their voices, to be confused.
But, believe it or not, Eric
found a way to discern the molecules by calling on each one of them
individually, using a microscope so simple – that he built it with a friend –
in his living room.
As for myself, I never had that
kind of patience. Calling on each molecule one by one? No way. I just told all
of them to be quiet – except for a selected few.
Just keep the molecules quiet,
and let only a few speak up. ... A simple solution to a supposedly unsolvable
problem. It made the resolution limit - history.
Now have a guess, where did this
idea occur to me?
Not very far from here, actually:
in a student dorm in Finnish Åbo – in what you may kindly call – a living room.
So, what does it take, ladies and
gentlemen, to end up standing here, telling you a story of important
discoveries or improvements?
Well...You definitely need a
living room. At the very least, you need a place to sleep. And when you fall
asleep you may forget that others consider you – too daring or too foolish.
But when morning comes, you would
better find yourself saying: “I have so many choices of what to do or what to
leave – every morning, every day. I better judge for myself, and – go ahead and
do it.”
Because nothing is more powerful
than an idea whose time has come – even if it came in a – living room – or to someone
– with a humble living.
And – if you feel we’ll never
raise dinosaurs...Who knows? One day someone may be actually standing here –
giving a banquet speech.
So, let us embrace a culture that
addresses problems deemed impossible to solve – and let us now honor those who
will do so with a toast.
Skål! |
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