William E. Moerner

William Esco Moerner, also known as W. E. Moerner, (born June 24, 1953) is an American physical chemist and chemical physicist who is the Harry S. Mosher Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Moerner is credited with achieving the first optical detection and spectroscopy of a single molecule in condensed phases, along with his postdoc, Lothar Kador. Optical study of single molecules has since become a widely used single-molecule experiment in chemistry, physics and biology. In 2014, Moerner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Eric Betzig and Stefan W. Hell, "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy".