What is Gerd Binnig known for?
I am best known for co-inventing the scanning tunneling microscope, or STM, in 1981 with Heinrich Rohrer at IBM Zurich. That instrument let us, for the first time, actually see and touch individual atoms on a surface—not just infer them from calculations. We shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for that work. But I didn't stop there. I later developed the atomic force microscope, or AFM, which can image non-conductive surfaces, like biological molecules, by feeling their contours with a tiny cantilever. To me, these tools are extensions of the human hand and eye. They let us dance with nature at the atomic scale. You have to touch the atoms to understand them—that's the core of my approach.
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