Professor Christoph Gerber visits ICMM to meet Ricardo García and José Ángel Martín Gago

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Professor Christoph Gerber, one of the co-inventors of the microscope that opened the doors to the nanoworld, has been visiting the Material Science Institute of Madrid (ICMM), CSIC. He is touring around Spain after being part of the 'Fuerzas y Túnel' Conference, held in Zamora (Spain).

Gerber is known as one of the co-inventors of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope and the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), but also as the man that introduced it to Spain almost four decades ago. He is also a co-inventor of Biochemical sensors based on AFM Technology.

Gerber, after his participation in 'Fuerzas y Tunel', wanted to know more about the research being done at ICMM. "I've impressed, I've never seen such a concentration of high results", he told during the visit. He was accompanied by Verena Thurner and Prof. Ernst Meyer. At ICMM, the group went to meet Ricardo García, a "longstanding colleague", in Gerber's words, as they knew each other for almost 40 years, but they had not had the chance to meet in person until this week. García showed the group the last research he is doing with his group 'Force Tool Lab'; some of them surprised them greatly. 

After then, ICMM's director, José Ángel Martín Gago, showed the researchers a very singular facility at ICMM: the Stardust, a machine that can learn how the stars were born using vacuum. "Incredible, amazing", were some of the words said by Gerber, who was so impressive and interested in all the results of ICMM's staff.  "It's kin of poetic: to learn about the start you have to go to the atoms", said the professor. 

-- Ángela R. Bonachera - ICMM Communication Unit --