The scanning tunneling microscope (STM), invented at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in 1981, was an almost-instant success. Its inventors, Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig, had to wait only five years before they were awarded the Nobel Prize alongside Ernst Ruska, who had had to wait 53 years since inventing the electron microscope. [Source: Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Society; Microscopy, Scanning Tunneling]
scanning probe microscopy
scanning tunneling microscopy
concepts