#11 Stefan Hell
Nobel Prize laureate Stefan Hell, a physicist specializing in microscopy and director of the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, spoke on March 25, 2023, at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe on the topic “How to Overcome Scientific Boundaries.” With remarkable candor, Hell shares his academic journey with the audience and offers insight into his self-conception as a basic research scientist.
Raised in German-speaking Transylvania, he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany after completing his secondary education at the same high school attended by the Nobel Prize–winning author Herta Müller. He studied physics in Heidelberg and was already engaged with problems of microscopy during his doctoral studies. For a long time, the electron microscope had been regarded as the highest technical standard for penetrating the smallest structural elements optically. However, it proved unsuitable for analyzing living cells—particularly their proteins—because these could not be prepared appropriately for microscopic examination for medical reasons. The older light microscope, operated with laser radiation and using a lens to focus on the desired objects, could perform better in this respect, since the proteins under investigation could be marked with fluorescent markers and then made visible through light. The problem, however, was that light propagates in waves and therefore only highlights larger bundles of proteins, never a single protein.
As a postdoctoral researcher in Turku, Finland—where interest in light microscopy was stronger than in Germany—Stefan Hell made the decisive discovery in this field in 1993. Light can not only detect specific structures but also selectively switch them off. If the light beam is shaped in such a way that most of the cells irrelevant to the investigation are suppressed, the desired protein can be isolated and highlighted within the light wave. With this so-called STED technique, it became possible to build laser microscopes at relatively low cost that can analyze proteins with a level of precision unattainable by electron microscopy. This development marked a significant milestone for cancer research.
Stefan Hell needed many years to convince the scientific community of his invention. For a long time, he had no permanent position, lived under precarious conditions, traveled to conferences at his own expense, and submitted funding applications in vain. It was not until the second half of the 1990s, after completing his habilitation, that he was appointed group leader at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, and in 2002 he was named its director. Looking back, he says that what motivated him most was the feeling of doing what gave him the greatest intellectual satisfaction—even when his research temporarily received no recognition.
Two key messages conclude his lecture: even in science, it can be difficult to overcome entrenched prejudices by venturing down new paths. And only curiosity-driven basic research leads to breakthroughs that ultimately prove economically beneficial. Those who think solely in terms of utility and define their goals merely by potential benefit, by contrast, are less creative.
“Curious Minds Make a Difference”—the motto of Wübben Stiftung Wissenschaft—is affirmed by Nobel laureate Stefan Hell.
Peter-André Alt
Date March 25, 2023
Language German
Length 62 mins
Title, series Stefan Hell: Wie man eine wissenschaftliche Grenze überwindet...und was man daraus machen kann, Renaissance 3.0
Video ZKM Karlsruhe