From physical limits to scientific breakthroughs. EANS2026 welcomes Nobel Laureate Prof. Stefan W. Hell.

A physicist who changed the rules of imaging science, Prof. Stefan Hell broke one of microscopy’s most established barriers, the diffraction limit, and opened a new era of super-resolution imaging.

Director at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, he is credited with having conceived, validated and applied the first viable concept for overcoming Abbe’s diffraction-limited resolution barrier in a light-focusing fluorescence microscope. For this accomplishment, he has received numerous awards, including the 2014 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

At EANS2026, he will deliver his keynote lecture:

“How to overcome a supposed scientific barrier … and what to make of it”

In the 20th century, it was assumed that the resolution of a light microscope could not be increased beyond 200 nm. This limit was attributed to the wave nature of light and the resulting phenomenon of diffraction. Prof Hell shows how this limit has been radically overcome in fluorescence microscopy. Recent developments such as MINFLUX and MINSTED microscopy even achieve resolutions of 1-3 nm, which is about the size of the fluorescence molecules themselves. The hundredfold better resolution and molecular dynamics that can be measured with these new methods open up completely new fields of application for light microscopy in biomedicines.

Join us in Hamburg from 30 September to 4 October 2026 for a programme built on ideas that move neurosurgery forward. Standard rates available until 23 August.