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Global Young Scientists Summit

Stefan Hell

Discover how Professor Stefan Hell broke the boundaries of light microscopy and earned the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his groundbreaking work in nanoscience.

Last updated 3 August 2026

Stefan Hell

Stefan Hell, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014, a bald man with glasses wearing a white shirt, circular portrait.

Professor Stefan W. Hell is a director at both the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany. He received his doctorate (1990) in physics from the University of Heidelberg. He worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory from 1991 to 1993, followed by the University of Turku, Finland from 1993 to 1996. From 2003 to 2017, he led a research group at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg.

He has received several awards for breaking the diffraction resolution barrier in light-focusing microscopy, including sharing both the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014. In 2022, Prof Hell was inducted to the Order Pour le Mérite, one of Germany’s most prestigious accolades. In 2023, he received the honorary medal "In Publica Commoda" of the University of Göttingen and was awarded the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring.