Another ground-breaking contribution, this time to clinical microbiology, came in 2001 with the revolutionary Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscope, developed by Professor Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany. Though his efforts met with considerable doubt from colleagues in the beginning, Hell went on to develop a light microscope with a much higher resolution than anyone thought possible. (See for example European patent EP0801759.)

With a microscope able to look deep inside living cells, scientists can launch new studies into the origins of diseases and develop new insights into the principles of life at a molecular level. Hell's invention has advanced the research of cancer and infectious diseases tremendously, a field to which he himself has contributed directly as head of the High Resolution Optical Microscopy Division at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg. Little wonder STED has quickly proven an essential tool in everyday clinical research.

(Source: EPO)