Heinrich Rohrer

Heinrich Rohrer
Born	Template:Birth date Buchs, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Died	May 16, 2013(2013-05-16) (aged 79) Wollerau, Switzerland
Occupation	Physicist
Known for	Co-developing the scanning tunneling microscope (STM)

Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist renowned for co-developing the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which earned him and Gerd Binnig half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics. The remaining portion of the prize was granted to Ernst Ruska. The Heinrich Rohrer Medal, presented every three years by the Surface Science Society of Japan in collaboration with IBM Research – Zurich, the Swiss Embassy in Japan, and Ms. Rohrer, commemorates his contributions. It should be noted that this accolade is separate from the Heinrich Rohrer Award given at Nano Seoul 2020.

Biography

Born in Buchs, St. Gallen just before his twin sister, Rohrer experienced a rural upbringing before relocating with his family to Zürich in 1949. He commenced studies at the ETH Zurich in 1951, where he was mentored by prominent figures such as Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Scherrer. His doctoral research, overseen by P. Grassmann and initiated by Jørgen Lykke Olsen, explored cryogenic engineering with an emphasis on detecting dimensional changes in superconductors during magnetic-field-driven transitions. Due to the experiment's sensitivity to vibrations, much of this work was conducted during nighttime hours.

Rohrer's academic pursuits were briefly interrupted by his service in the Swiss mountain infantry. In 1961, he wed Rose-Marie Egger; their honeymoon included collaborative research on thermal conductivity in type-II superconductors alongside Bernie Serin at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

In 1963, Rohrer began his tenure at the IBM Research Laboratory located in Rüschlikon, under the leadership of Ambros Speiser. His early investigations focused on Kondo systems and magnetoresistance phenomena under pulsed magnetic fields, later transitioning to studies concerning magnetic phase diagrams and critical behaviors.

During a sabbatical in 1974 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he engaged in nuclear magnetic resonance research with Vince Jaccarino and Alan King.

Rohrer's work culminated by 1982 with the development of the STM, a revolutionary tool for imaging surfaces at the atomic scale. He was honored as an IBM Fellow in 1986 and served as head of IBM's physics department from 1986 until 1988. His international recognition includes honorary membership in the Swiss Physical Society since 1990 and designation as an honorary academician of Academia Sinica in 2008.

Death

Heinrich Rohrer passed away due to natural causes on 16 May 2013 at his residence in Wollerau, Switzerland, at the age of 79.

External links

• Including the Nobel Lecture delivered on December 8, 1986, titled Scanning Tunneling Microscopy – From Birth to Adolescence