
Photo: The original uploader was Stefan Kühn at German Wikipedia. / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Gerd Binnig belongs to my favorite category of human: people who force the invisible to become visible. Sharing the 1986 Nobel Prize for the scanning tunneling microscope, he and Heinrich Rohrer literally gave us eyes to see individual atoms, an achievement so fundamental it is easy to forget how impossible it once sounded. The stack of honors, IBM Fellow, King Faisal Prize, Bavarian decorations, is almost comical in length, yet I suspect the real engine was childlike curiosity rather than ambition. That, to me, is the purest kind of genius: not wanting glory, just wanting to see what is actually down there.
Overview
Gerd Karl Binnig (German pronunciation: [ˈɡɛʁt ˈbɪnɪç] ; born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Gerd Binnig
- Name (Japanese)
- ゲルト・ビーニッヒ
- Reading
- げると・びーにっひ
- Born
- July 20, 1947 (age 78)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Cancer / Boar
- Origin
- Frankfurt, Darmstadt Government Region, Germany
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- physicist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Goethe University Frankfurt
Awards & achievements
- 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics
- 1987 Elliott Cresson Medal
- IBM Fellow
- Bavarian Order of Merit
- Great Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 1984 King Faisal International Prize in Science
- 1998 Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art
- 1983 Gustav Hertz Prize
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Physicist — see all → · More people from Germany →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.