Swiss physicist (1933-2013)
He helped invent the microscope that let us see individual atoms — a tool that turned quantum mechanics from theory into something you could point at and map, one surface at a time.
Heinrich Rohrer was born in Switzerland on 6 June 1933. In 1986, he and Gerd Binnig shared half the Nobel Prize in Physics for designing the scanning tunneling microscope, a device that made it possible to image surfaces at the atomic level; Ernst Ruska took the other half that year. The STM didn't just refine existing methods — it opened a new dimension of measurement, giving scientists direct access to structures that had been theoretical abstractions. Rohrer died on 16 May 2013. A medal bearing his name is now awarded triennially by the Surface Science Society of Japan, IBM Research – Zuric…
Sourced, dated quotes from Heinrich Rohrer
We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on.
We had the freedom to make mistakes. That's something very important. Unfortunately, this freedom for scientists gets more and more lost. … Otherwise, you do the common things.
Young people are not yet biased in their mind. They are not completely taken by their expert opinions. Expert opinions have a difficulty to go beyond of what they know.
To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value.
I lost all respect for angstroms.
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