Science & invention
Eric Betzig
born 1960 · physicist
Physicist who shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for super-resolution fluorescence microscopy; born in Ann Arbor, he spent years back in Michigan at his family's machine-tool company.
- Born
Ann Arbor, Michigan
age 66- Birth name
- Robert Eric Betzig
- Detroit years
- 1960s; 1996–2005
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Betzig was born in Ann Arbor in 1960, the son of an engineer, Robert Betzig, whose family partly owned the Ann Arbor Machine Company. After studying at Caltech and Cornell he worked at Bell Labs on near-field optical microscopy, then stepped away from research in the mid-1990s. After some years as a stay-at-home father, he came back to Michigan in 1996 as vice president for research and development at the family firm, working on control systems for machine tools. In 2002 he founded New Millennium Research in Okemos, near Lansing, to return to microscopy, and with his friend Harald Hess he built the first photoactivated localization microscope, which can pinpoint single protein molecules inside cells. That work brought him a share of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Highlights
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2014, with Stefan Hell and W. E. Moerner
- Co-developed photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM) with Harald Hess
- Born in Ann Arbor, 1960
- Research vice president at the family-owned Ann Arbor Machine Company from 1996