Electron microscope constructed by Ernst Ruska in 1933

Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (25 December 1906 – 27 May 1988^[1]) was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in electron optics, including the design of the first electron microscope.

Ruska was born in Heidelberg. He was educated at the Technical University of Munich from 1925 to 1927 and then entered the Technical University of Berlin, where he posited that microscopes using electrons, with wavelengths 1000 times shorter than those of light, could provide a more detailed picture of an object than a microscope utilizing light, in which magnification is limited by the size of the wavelengths. In 1931, he demonstrated that a magnetic coil could act as an electron lens, and used several coils in a series to build the first electron microscope in 1933.

After completing his PhD in 1933, Ruska continued to work in the field of electron optics, first at Fernseh Ltd in Berlin-Zehlendorf, and then from 1937 at Siemens-Reiniger-Werke AG. At Siemens, he was involved in developing the first commercially-produced electron microscope in 1939. As well as developing the technology of electron microscopy while at Siemens, Ruska also worked at other scientific institutions, and encouraged Siemens to set up a laboratory for visiting researchers, which was initially headed by Ruska's brother Helmut, a medical doctor who developed the use of the electron microscope for medical and biological applications.

After leaving Siemens in 1955, Ruska served as director of the Institute for Electron Microscopy of the Fritz Haber Institute until 1974. Concurrently, he served at the institute and as professor at the Technical University of Berlin from 1957 until his retirement in 1974.

In 1986, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his many achievements in electron optics; Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer won a quarter each for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope. He died in West Berlin in 1988.

References[link]

• Nobel Prize press release
• Ernst Ruska's official Nobel autobiography
• Website containing memorial information published by the Ruska family

Don Eigler in 2007 with his two dogs Neon and Argon

Donald M. Eigler is an American physicist at the IBM Almaden Research Center, who is noted for his achievements in nanotechnology. In 1989, he was the first to use a scanning tunneling microscope tip to arrange individual atoms on a surface, famously spelling out the letters "IBM" with 35 xenon atoms. He later went on to create the first quantum corrals, which are well-defined quantum wave patterns of small numbers of atoms, and nanoscale logic circuits using individual atoms of carbon monoxide. He shared the 2010 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for these breakthroughs.^[1]

Eigler's 1989 research, along with Erhard K. Schweizer, involved a new use of the scanning tunneling microscope, which had been invented in the mid 1980s by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, also of IBM. The microscope had previously been used for atomic-resolution imaging, but this was the first time it had been used as an active technique, to precisely position individual atoms on a surface. The technique requires vacuum conditions and ultra-cold temperatures achieved by liquid helium cooling, and was featured on the cover of the journal Nature. At the time, it was seen as a potential first step towards applications in mechanosynthesis, where chemical reactions could be manipulated one molecule at a time.^[2][3] Eigler's 2002 research, along with Andreas J. Heinrich, used a cascade of collisions of carbon monoxide molecules to perform logic operations.^[4]

Eigler graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a bachelors degree in 1975 and a doctoral degree in 1984. He was postdoctoral staff at AT&T Bell Labs for two years, and then moved to IBM.^[5][6]

References[link]