Robert Eric Betzig (born January 13, 1960) is an American physicist who works as a professor of physics and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.[2][3][4] He is also a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.[2][4][5]
Betzig has worked to develop the field of fluorescence microscopy and photoactivated localization microscopy. He was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy"[6] along with Stefan Hell and fellow Cornell alumnus William E. Moerner.[7]
Dual color localization microscopy SPDMphymod/super-resolution microscopy with GFP & RFP fusion proteins
Early life and education
Betzig was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1960, the son of Helen Betzig and engineer Robert Betzig. Aspiring to work in the aerospace industry, Betzig studied physics at the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a BS degree in 1983. He then went on to study at Cornell University where he was advised by Aaron Lewis and Michael Isaacson. There he obtained an MS degree and a PhD degree in applied physics and engineering physics in 1985 and 1988, respectively. For his PhD he focused on developing high-resolution optical microscopes that could see past the theoretical limit of 0.2 micrometers.[8][9][10]
Career
Bell Laboratories
After receiving his doctorate, Betzig was hired by AT&T Bell Laboratories in the Semiconductor Physics Research Department in 1989. That year Betzig's colleague, William E. Moerner, developed the first optical microscope that could see past the .2 micrometer limit, known as the Abbe limit, but it could only function at temperatures near absolute zero. Inspired by Moerner's research, Betzig became the first person to image individual fluorescent molecules at room temperature while determining their positions within less than .2 micrometers in 1993. For this he received the William O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research (previously known as the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research).[8] Betzig was also awarded the William L. McMillan Award in 1992.[citation needed]
Ann Arbor Machine Company
In 1994, Betzig became frustrated with the academic community and the uncertainty of the corporate structure of Bell Laboratories, prompting him to leave both. He spent some years as a stay-at-home dad before reentering the workforce in 1996, when he took up the position of vice president of research and development at Ann Arbor Machine Company, which was owned by the Betzig family.[11][7] Here he developed Flexible Adaptive Servohydraulic Technology (FAST), but after spending millions of dollars on development he only sold two devices.[8][9][11][12]
Return to academia
In 2002, Betzig returned to the field of microscopy and founded New Millennium Research in Okemos, Michigan. Inspired by Mike Davidson's work with fluorescent proteins, he developed photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), a method of controlling fluorescent proteins that used pulses of light to create images of a higher resolution than were previously thought possible. In the living room of his old Bell Labs collaborator Harald Hess, Betzig and Hess developed the first optical microscope based on this technology. They built their first prototype in under two months, earning them widespread attention. In October of that year, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus hired him, but his lab was still under construction at the time.[9]
In early 2006, he formally joined Janelia as a group leader to work on developing super high-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques. He used this technique to study the division of cells in human embryos.[7][13] In 2010, he was offered the Max Delbruck Prize, but he declined it and Xiaowei Zhuang received the award. In 2014, Betzig was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Stefan Hell and William E. Moerner.[6][9][14]
Eric Betzig at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 14, 2018
On May 31, 2016 he was appointed an Academician of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Francis.
In the summer of 2017, Betzig joined the Berkeley faculty with a joint appointment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[15]
Selected research papers
1993: Single molecules observed by near-field scanning optical microscopy, E Betzig, RJ Chichester – Science – science.sciencemag.org[16]
1992: Near-field optics: microscopy, spectroscopy, and surface modification beyond the diffraction limit, E Betzig, JK Trautman – Science – science.sciencemag.org[17]
2006: Imaging intracellular fluorescent proteins at nanometer resolution, E Betzig, GH Patterson, R Sougrat. – science.sciencemag.org[18]
2014: Lattice light-sheet microscopy: imaging molecules to embryos at high spatiotemporal resolution, G Seydoux, US Tulu, DP Kiehart, E Betzig – science.sciencemag.org[19]
References
"Eighty-Ninth Annual Commencement – California Institute of Technology" (PDF). caltechcampuspubs.library.caltech.edu. California Institute of Technology. June 10, 1983. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
"Eric Betzig | UC Berkeley Physics". physics.berkeley.edu. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
"Eric Betzig | Research UC Berkeley". vcresearch.berkeley.edu. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
"Eric Betzig". HHMI.org. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
"Eric Betzig, PhD". hhmi.org. Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB. October 8, 2014. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
"Eric Betzig Wins 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry". HHMI News. hhmi.org. October 8, 2014. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
"Eric Betzig". janelia.org. Janelia Farm Research Campus. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
Feltman, Rachel (October 8, 2014). "Nobel chemistry laureate's twisting path to molecular microscope breakthrough". Washington Post. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
Betzig, Robert Eric (1988). Nondestructive optical imaging of surfaces with 500 angstrom resolution (Ph.D.). Cornell University. OCLC 79223216 – via ProQuest.
Timmer, John (April 10, 2015). "Quitting + failures + a microscope in the living room = Nobel Prize". ars technicia. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
Gewin, Virginia (2006). "Eric Betzig, group leader, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Leesburg, Virginia". Nature. 440 (7083): 578. doi:10.1038/nj7083-578a. S2CID 143733760.
Feltman, Rachel (October 8, 2014). "The Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to three men who revolutionized microscopy". Washington Post. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
"EricBetzig: Chemist and Nobel Prize". Starmus. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
Israel, Brett (September 27, 2016). "Nobel Prize winner to join UC Berkeley faculty". Berkeley News. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
Betzig, Eric; Chichester, Robert J. (November 26, 1993). "Single Molecules Observed by Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscopy". Science. 262 (5138): 1422–1425. doi:10.1126/science.262.5138.1422. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17736823.
Betzig, Eric; Trautman, Jay K. (July 10, 1992). "Near-Field Optics: Microscopy, Spectroscopy, and Surface Modification Beyond the Diffraction Limit". Science. 257 (5067): 189–195. doi:10.1126/science.257.5067.189. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17794749. S2CID 38041885.
Betzig, Eric; Patterson, George H.; Sougrat, Rachid; Lindwasser, O. Wolf; Olenych, Scott; Bonifacino, Juan S.; Davidson, Michael W.; Lippincott-Schwartz, Jennifer; Hess, Harald F. (September 15, 2006). "Imaging Intracellular Fluorescent Proteins at Nanometer Resolution". Science. 313 (5793): 1642–1645. doi:10.1126/science.1127344. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 16902090.
Chen, Bi-Chang; Legant, Wesley R.; Wang, Kai; Shao, Lin; Milkie, Daniel E.; Davidson, Michael W.; Janetopoulos, Chris; Wu, Xufeng S.; Hammer, John A.; Liu, Zhe; English, Brian P. (October 24, 2014). "Lattice light-sheet microscopy: Imaging molecules to embryos at high spatiotemporal resolution". Science. 346 (6208). doi:10.1126/science.1257998. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 4336192. PMID 25342811.
External links
Eric Betzig talk: Developing PALM Microscopy
Eric Betzig, SPIE Photonics West plenary presentation: Single molecules, cells, and super-resolution optics
Eric Betzig, Beyond the Nobel Prize – New approaches to microscopy
Eric Betzig on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata
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Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1901–1925
1901: Jacobus van 't Hoff 1902: Emil Fischer 1903: Svante Arrhenius 1904: William Ramsay 1905: Adolf von Baeyer 1906: Henri Moissan 1907: Eduard Buchner 1908: Ernest Rutherford 1909: Wilhelm Ostwald 1910: Otto Wallach 1911: Marie Curie 1912: Victor Grignard / Paul Sabatier 1913: Alfred Werner 1914: Theodore Richards 1915: Richard Willstätter 1916 1917 1918: Fritz Haber 1919 1920: Walther Nernst 1921: Frederick Soddy 1922: Francis Aston 1923: Fritz Pregl 1924 1925: Richard Zsigmondy
1926–1950
1926: Theodor Svedberg 1927: Heinrich Wieland 1928: Adolf Windaus 1929: Arthur Harden / Hans von Euler-Chelpin 1930: Hans Fischer 1931: Carl Bosch / Friedrich Bergius 1932: Irving Langmuir 1933 1934: Harold Urey 1935: Frédéric Joliot-Curie / Irène Joliot-Curie 1936: Peter Debye 1937: Norman Haworth / Paul Karrer 1938: Richard Kuhn 1939: Adolf Butenandt / Leopold Ružička 1940 1941 1942 1943: George de Hevesy 1944: Otto Hahn 1945: Artturi Virtanen 1946: James B. Sumner / John Northrop / Wendell Meredith Stanley 1947: Robert Robinson 1948: Arne Tiselius 1949: William Giauque 1950: Otto Diels / Kurt Alder
1951–1975
1951: Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg 1952: Archer Martin / Richard Synge 1953: Hermann Staudinger 1954: Linus Pauling 1955: Vincent du Vigneaud 1956: Cyril Hinshelwood / Nikolay Semyonov 1957: Alexander Todd 1958: Frederick Sanger 1959: Jaroslav Heyrovský 1960: Willard Libby 1961: Melvin Calvin 1962: Max Perutz / John Kendrew 1963: Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta 1964: Dorothy Hodgkin 1965: Robert Woodward 1966: Robert S. Mulliken 1967: Manfred Eigen / Ronald Norrish / George Porter 1968: Lars Onsager 1969: Derek Barton / Odd Hassel 1970: Luis Federico Leloir 1971: Gerhard Herzberg 1972: Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein 1973: Ernst Otto Fischer / Geoffrey Wilkinson 1974: Paul Flory 1975: John Cornforth / Vladimir Prelog
1976–2000
1976: William Lipscomb 1977: Ilya Prigogine 1978: Peter D. Mitchell 1979: Herbert C. Brown / Georg Wittig 1980: Paul Berg / Walter Gilbert / Frederick Sanger 1981: Kenichi Fukui / Roald Hoffmann 1982: Aaron Klug 1983: Henry Taube 1984: Robert Merrifield 1985: Herbert A. Hauptman / Jerome Karle 1986: Dudley R. Herschbach / Yuan T. Lee / John Polanyi 1987: Donald J. Cram / Jean-Marie Lehn / Charles J. Pedersen 1988: Johann Deisenhofer / Robert Huber / Hartmut Michel 1989: Sidney Altman / Thomas Cech 1990: Elias Corey 1991: Richard R. Ernst 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus 1993: Kary Mullis / Michael Smith 1994: George Olah 1995: Paul J. Crutzen / Mario Molina / F. Sherwood Rowland 1996: Robert Curl / Harold Kroto / Richard Smalley 1997: Paul D. Boyer / John E. Walker / Jens Christian Skou 1998: Walter Kohn / John Pople 1999: Ahmed Zewail 2000: Alan J. Heeger / Alan MacDiarmid / Hideki Shirakawa
2001–present
2001: William Knowles / Ryoji Noyori / K. Barry Sharpless 2002: John B. Fenn / Koichi Tanaka / Kurt Wüthrich 2003: Peter Agre / Roderick MacKinnon 2004: Aaron Ciechanover / Avram Hershko / Irwin Rose 2005: Robert H. Grubbs / Richard R. Schrock / Yves Chauvin 2006: Roger D. Kornberg 2007: Gerhard Ertl 2008: Osamu Shimomura / Martin Chalfie / Roger Y. Tsien 2009: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan / Thomas A. Steitz / Ada E. Yonath 2010: Richard F. Heck / Akira Suzuki / Ei-ichi Negishi 2011: Dan Shechtman 2012: Robert Lefkowitz / Brian Kobilka 2013: Martin Karplus / Michael Levitt / Arieh Warshel 2014: Eric Betzig / Stefan Hell / William E. Moerner 2015: Tomas Lindahl / Paul L. Modrich / Aziz Sancar 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage / Fraser Stoddart / Ben Feringa 2017: Jacques Dubochet / Joachim Frank / Richard Henderson 2018: Frances Arnold / Gregory Winter / George Smith 2019: John B. Goodenough / M. Stanley Whittingham / Akira Yoshino 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier / Jennifer Doudna 2021: David MacMillan / Benjamin List 2022: Carolyn R. Bertozzi / Morten P. Meldal / Karl Barry Sharpless 2023: Moungi G. Bawendi / Louis E. Brus / Alexei I. Ekimov
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