The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 to Eric Betzig and William E. Moerner from the US and Stefan W. Hell from Germany “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”

For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. According to an official announcement released by the Academy, the Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2014, helped by fluorescent molecules, ingeniously circumvented this limitation. Their ground-breaking work has brought optical microscopy into the nanodimension.

In what has become known as nanoscopy, scientists visualize the pathways of individual molecules inside living cells. They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos.

The prize amount of SEK 8 million is to be shared equally between the Laureates.