In July 1985, three physicists—Gerd Binnig of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Christoph Gerber of the University of Basel, and Calvin Quate of Stanford University—puzzled over a problem while schmoozing at a microscopy workshop in the Austrian alps: How could they accurately visualize biological material without destroying it?
The scanning tunneling microscope, which Binnig had co-invented 4 years earlier, provided atomic resolution without the need for ultra-low temperatures. But it relied on an electric current flowing through conductive materials. Thus, viewing biological samples—especially living cells—was out of the question.
At the workshop, the trio fleshed out a new idea: Instead of measuring voltage fluctuations, they could simply look for fine-scale changes in miniscule van der Waals or electrostatic forces. Without the need for a current, such an "atomic force microscope" (AFM) could reveal the structure of nonconductive materials such as proteins, organelles, and whole cells.
Immediately thereafter, the three physicists ...
