Stockholm: Optical microscopy was for long presumed to have a limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Three scientists - two American and a German - proved this wrong and made an optical microscope into a nanoscope to earn the 2014 Nobel for Chemistry.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday the Nobel Prize to be jointly awarded to Eric Betzig from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn; Stefan W. Hell from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen; and William E. Moerner from the University of Stanford, Britain.