Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, both from IBM in Zurich, won the Nobel prize in 1983 for the invention of the Scanning Tunneling microscope. This technique gave birth to a family of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) instrumenatations.
Their approach to solving the problem of imaging nanoscale objects is
novel. Their solution was to literally feel the surface of the object
with a very sharp probe. Very fine control on the movement of the
probe was made possible by advances in piezoelectric technology.
Previous microscopists were obsessed with the idea of observing small objects
by bombarding them with electrons or electromagnetic radiations (light
of various wavelengths).