physics

Heinrich Rohrer

Heinrich Rohrer is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Heinrich Rohrer rather than just read about it. In short: Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst Ruska.

Key takeaways

Heinrich Rohrer belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Heinrich Rohrer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Heinrich Rohrer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst Ruska. The Heinrich Rohrer Medal is presented triennially by the Surface Science Society of Japan with IBM Research – Zurich, Swiss Embassy in Japan, and Ms. Rohrer in his memory. The medal is not to be confused with the Heinrich Rohrer Award presented at the Nano Seoul 2020 conference.

Biography Heinrich Rohrer was born on 6 June 1933 in Buchs, St. Gallen, half an hour after his twin sister. He enjoyed a carefree country childhood until the family moved to Zürich in 1949. He enrolled in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 1951, where he was student of Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Scherrer. His PhD thesis was supervised by P. Grassmann who worked on cryogenic engineering. Rohrer measured the length changes of superconductors at the magnetic-field-induced superconducting transition, a project begun by Jørgen Lykke Olsen. In the course of his research, he found that he had to do most of his research at night after the city was asleep because his measurements were so sensitive to vibration. His studies were interrupted by his military service in the Swiss mountain infantry. In 1961, he married Rose-Marie Egger. Their honeymoon trip to the United States included a stint doing research on thermal conductivity of type-II superconductors and metals with Bernie Serin at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1963, he joined the IBM Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon under the direction of Ambros Speiser. The first couple of years at IBM, he studied Kondo systems with magnetoresistance in pulsed magnetic fields. He then began studying magnetic phase diagrams, which eventually brought him into the field of critical phenomena. In 1974, he spent a sabbatical year at the University of California, Santa Barbara studying nuclear magnetic resonance with Vince Jaccarino and Alan King. Until 1982 he worked on the scanning tunneling microscope. He was appointed IBM Fellow in 1986, and led the physics department of the research lab from 1986 until 1988. Rohrer was elected as an honourable member of the Swiss Physical Society in 1990 and an honorary academician of Academia Sinica in 2008. Rohrer died of natural causes on 16 May 2013 at his home in Wollerau, Switzerland, aged 79.

References

External links Heinrich Rohrer on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1986 Scanning Tunneling Microscopy – From Birth to Adolescence

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Heinrich Rohrer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Heinrich Rohrer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Heinrich Rohrer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Heinrich Rohrer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Heinrich Rohrer

In research: Heinrich Rohrer appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Heinrich Rohrer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Heinrich Rohrer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1933 births, 2013 deaths, ETH Zurich alumni, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Heinrich Rohrer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Heinrich Rohrer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Heinrich Rohrer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Heinrich Rohrer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Heinrich Rohrer in simple terms?

Why does Heinrich Rohrer matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Heinrich Rohrer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Heinrich Rohrer.