Prof. Dr.  Stefan W.  Hell

Prof. Dr. Stefan W. Hell

Max Planck Institute for Medical Research
Jahnstraße 29
69120 Heidelberg
Copyright: Peter Badge/Typos1 in cop. with Foundation Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings - all rights reserved 2017

Curriculum Vitae

Stefan Hell is a director at both the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences  (until the end of 2021: Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry) in Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany.

Hell is credited with having conceived, validated and applied the first viable concept for overcoming Abbe’s diffraction-limited resolution barrier in a light-focusing fluorescence microscope. For this accomplishment he has received numerous awards, including the 2014 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Stefan Hell received his doctorate (1990) in physics from the University of Heidelberg. From 1991 to 1993 he worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, followed by stays as a senior researcher at the University of Turku, Finland, between 1993 and 1996, and as a visiting scientist at the University of Oxford, England, in 1994. In 1997 he was appointed to the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry (now: Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences ) in Göttingen as a group leader, and was promoted to director in 2002. From 2003 to 2017 he also led a research group at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). Hell holds honorary professorships in physics at the Universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen.

Selected Awards

For his research, Stefan Hell has received numerous scientific awards, including
  • Werner-von-Siemens-Ring (2022),
  • the Nobel Prize in Chemisty (2014),
  • the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience (2014),
  • the Otto Hahn Prize (2009),
  • the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and the State Prize of Lower Saxony (2008),
  • the German Future Prize of the Federal President (2006).
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