Heinrich Rohrer, Nobel winning physicist, dies at 79

Heinrich Rohrer, the Swiss physicist who won a Nobel Prize for the invention of a microscope that could see individual atoms, died Thursday at the age of 79.

The Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger broke the news, claiming that Rohrer died at his home in Wollerau, Switzerland, The Boston Globe reported. The cause of death has not yet been disclosed.

Rohrer was working alongside Gerd Binnig when they conceived the scanning tunneling microscope that earned them a Nobel Prize in 1986. The device, which opened the door to nanotechnology, was created at an IBM laboratory in 1981.