Heinrich Rohrer

Heinrich
Rohrer
Year
1987
Subject
Physics
Award
Cresson
Affiliation
IBM's Zurich Division Research Laboratory
Citation
For the development of scanning tunneling microscope.

Heinrich Rohrer was born in Buchs, St. Gallen, Switzerland in 1933. Together with Gerd Binnig, he shares the honor of creating the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981. The scanning tunneling microscope provided the first images of individual atoms on the surfaces of materials. It provides a three-dimensional profile of the surface which is very useful for characterizing surface roughness, observing surface defects, and determining the size and conformation of molecules and aggregates on the surface.

Dr. Rohrer was educated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1955 and his doctorate degree in 1960. After post-doctoral work at the Swiss Federal Institute and Rutgers University in the United States, Dr. Rohrer joined IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory, where he collaborated with Dr. Binnig.

Dr. Rohrer and Dr. Binnig were awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Information as of 1987